What is a marine robot like?

The magical and mysterious sea is sometimes full of beautiful water, but it may also be hollowed out in an instant. The turbulent sea will seriously threaten the life safety of divers. In addition, the harsh marine environment and complex sea conditions have also set many obstacles for divers. Therefore, human beings are very much looking forward to the appearance of marine robots and the occupation of every corner of the Dragon Palace under the sea. With the development of modern science, the ideal of making robots has become a reality.

The world's first underwater robot "killer whale", which has a communication chain and can work independently, was developed by the United States. It has five microprocessors, an automatic camera with 5000 films, a perfect sonar device, a sound pulse transmitter, a stroboscope and a sensor. This robot weighs 2.9 tons. It doesn't need the staff on the sea to "guide" its actions, but it still needs to contact the sea if there are obstacles, camera failures or circuit interruptions. Therefore, when the robot works underwater, it reports its whereabouts and working status to the work boat every 10 second. These reports are displayed on the oscilloscope of the work ship. People on the working boat can know the working depth, direction, water temperature and engine working condition of the robot at any time. When necessary, the working ship can also issue control instructions, such as turning off the engine, camera and recorder, and releasing ballast blocks.

Although this robot was born not long ago, it has made great achievements. It dived 130 times, and the deepest point reached 5300m. I have been to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean for hundreds of square miles and have taken all the topographic maps of the seabed there. It also explored the general situation of submarine volcanoes near the Italian coast; Even a Coca-Cola can that sank to 9,000 feet failed to escape its eyes.

Now, there are marine meteorological observation robots in Japan. The ocean observation robot system consists of a buoy meteorological observation station at sea and a ground radio receiving center. It can carry out unmanned operation in the ocean with very bad environment all the year round, and inform the ground of the observed and collected meteorological data in time. The pontoon of the robot is made of steel with a diameter of 10 m. The tower pole standing in the center of the buoy is more than 7 meters above the sea surface, and meteorological observers are installed on the tower pole. This kind of robot can be firmly tied to the ocean thousands of meters deep through measuring chains, steel cables and iron anchors weighing more than 500 kilograms. Its power supply is provided by air wet battery and strong alkali battery. This robot automatically reports the observation results every three hours. The main observation items are wind direction, wind speed, air pressure, air temperature, sunshine, water temperature, salt content, flow direction, velocity and waves. It first converts the observed meteorological and sea state data into numbers, and then automatically broadcasts them through radio equipment. The radio waves emitted by the robot are received by the radio receiving center located on the ground, and then input into the information conversion system to inform the relevant departments.

Japan is continuing to develop a floating meteorological observation robot that can move on the sea according to instructions, so as to collect all kinds of meteorological and sea state data of the ocean more comprehensively.

Marine robots are developed from marine submersibles. So far, the submersible has gone through five stages, and the first four stages are manned. The fifth generation submersibles are unmanned submersibles, most of which are tethered and a few are cableless, all of which are remotely controlled by the mother ship working on the surface. The fifth generation submersible has actually entered the stage of marine robot. Marine robots are also divided into two types: cable-controlled marine robots and cable-free remote-controlled marine robots. As for how to better control underwater robots, there are still many problems waiting for people to study.