IIT-M student's underwater robot 'Duli' catches attention of DRDO

[PARIKRAMA]

IIT-M student's underwater robot 'Duli' catches attention of DRDO
By SV KRISHNA CHAITANYA

Published: 13th July 2016 04:22 AM

Last Updated: 13th July 2016 08:38 AM

CHENNAI: With robotics emerging as a major area of focus for military applications, especially the bio-inspired ones, countries across the globe are investing heavily in this domain. But, not many have tasted success so far.

Duli, the turtle-shaped Robotic Underwater Vehicle; (inset left) Santhosh Ravichandran, who developed the ROV, and his project supervisor Prabhu Rajagopal
However, Santhosh Ravichandran, an MS student specialising on machine design in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Madras, has developed a first-of-its kind turtle shaped Robotic Underwater Vehicle (ROV) with bio-inspired propeller similar to a dolphin fin in just three months.

Called ‘Duli’, a Sanskrit name for a turtle, it had immediately caught the attention of Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO). The robot has unique hydrodynamics with exceptional energy efficiency and camouflage abilities suited for carrying out of underwater SEAL operations. It can do visual inspection withstanding the undercurrent of the ocean, it is claimed.

Project supervisor and associate professor at IIT-M Prabhu Rajagopal said a DRDO lab was in talks. “They wanted us to install their own sensors and do certain modifications to suit military requirements,” he said.

Santhosh said the currently available underwater robots are predominantly operated with mechanical thrusters, which gives only 30% energy efficiency (read output to input), while Duli with bio-inspired flap movement will give 70% efficiency similar to biological organisms like dolphins.

“We have exhibited the prototype at Underwater Interventions expo in United States in February this year. US navy, which is a participant, was all praise for our product and actually am in touch with them for any technical assistance. They also now plan to start a bio-inspired robotics programme,” Santhosh said.

Rajagopal, who is also the director of Plany’s Technologies, a spin-off start-up providing robotic services to port and shipping industry, said the product was still at preliminary stage and needed a lot of on-field testing to address several practical problems that might arise, but all the basics are covered. An autonomous version would be ready in a few months.

The novelty of the Duli is bio-inspired tail that could be used for rapid long motion which is eco-friendly. It will do sensitive jobs like surveying coral reefs without causing any disturbance to marine life. The mechanical pectoral thrusters are used only for manoeuvring. Usually bio-inspired designs suffer from complexities in control systems such as under-actuation, lower manoeuvrability.

Rajagopal said optimal shape of the caudal fin and its driving mechanism is currently being researched using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations validated by experiments. Efforts are on to improve the hydrodynamic and mechanical dynamic performance of the vehicle with an improved hull design for robustness in a wide variety of applications.

http://www.newindianexpress.com/cit...tention-of-DRDO/2016/07/13/article3526462.ece

@amardeep mishra : IITM stuff..nice one

 

[PARIKRAMA]

First bio-inspired underwater robot

Chennai: A student from IIT-Madras and his professor have designed the country's first bio-inspired underwater robot which can be used for various operations like stealth observations in the military operations and to monitor the bio-environment in the sea.

The robotic fish 'Duli' (means turtle in Sanskrit) has biologically inspired caudal (tail) fin and conventional rotary thrusters. Santhosh Ravichandran, a second year MS student (machine design) from the department of mechanical engineering, has designed the robot with the guidance of his professor Prabhu Rajagopal.

"The remotely operated underwater vehicle can be camouflaged as fish. It can go undetected as nobody will be able to get a signature of it," said Rajagopal, associate professor, IIT-Madras and director, Planys Technologies Pvt Ltd, Chennai.

The bio-inspired fins can be used for long distance straight travel (with lesser manoeuverability requirements) and conventional rotary thrusters for complex local motions like turning.

"The bio-inspired vehicle is the future worldwide and in the robotics, the trend is more and more bio-inspired. We want to design the robot with all the fins like in the fish which can go much deeper but its very difficult to control," he said. "The vehicle is difficult to control. Lot more research is required before making it commercially available," he added.

The highly versatile vehicle can also be used for inspecting the structural stability of the ports, ships, offshore oil and gas rigs, bridges and dams. It can go up to 100 metres under the water.

"We moved into bio-inspired vehicles because we found that it is more efficient than the conventional vehicles," said Ravichandran. "Soon we realised that efficient bio-inspired vehicles are not really manoeuverable. Then we came up with the idea to integrate both the conventional thrusters and bio-inspired propulsions for both manoeuvrability and efficiency, " he said.

"In nature, there is a lot of mechanisms we can copy. Only very few people in the world are working in the bio-inspired vehicles. The efficiency of the conventional underwater vehicle is only around 40 per cent. This bio-inspired vehicle's efficiency will be more than 60 per cent," he said.

He studied types of fish ranging from sharks to tuna before settling in on the tail fin. The type of tail they have come up is having the resemblance of dolphins.

"There are vehicles with fish tails but this type of configuration using both the fish tail and conventional had not been done before. We also researched on how to make the fish fin to flap. We have got the provisional patent for design configuration and functionality of the vehicle," he said. "Our immediate goal is to make it more controllable and to make it commercially available," Ravichandran said.

http://m.dailyhunt.in/news/india/en...bio-inspired-underwater-robot-newsid-55458500

 

[Dash]

IIT-M student's underwater robot 'Duli' catches attention of DRDO
By SV KRISHNA CHAITANYA

Published: 13th July 2016 04:22 AM

Last Updated: 13th July 2016 08:38 AM

CHENNAI: With robotics emerging as a major area of focus for military applications, especially the bio-inspired ones, countries across the globe are investing heavily in this domain. But, not many have tasted success so far.

Duli, the turtle-shaped Robotic Underwater Vehicle; (inset left) Santhosh Ravichandran, who developed the ROV, and his project supervisor Prabhu Rajagopal
However, Santhosh Ravichandran, an MS student specialising on machine design in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Madras, has developed a first-of-its kind turtle shaped Robotic Underwater Vehicle (ROV) with bio-inspired propeller similar to a dolphin fin in just three months.

Called ‘Duli’, a Sanskrit name for a turtle, it had immediately caught the attention of Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO). The robot has unique hydrodynamics with exceptional energy efficiency and camouflage abilities suited for carrying out of underwater SEAL operations. It can do visual inspection withstanding the undercurrent of the ocean, it is claimed.

Project supervisor and associate professor at IIT-M Prabhu Rajagopal said a DRDO lab was in talks. “They wanted us to install their own sensors and do certain modifications to suit military requirements,” he said.

Santhosh said the currently available underwater robots are predominantly operated with mechanical thrusters, which gives only 30% energy efficiency (read output to input), while Duli with bio-inspired flap movement will give 70% efficiency similar to biological organisms like dolphins.

“We have exhibited the prototype at Underwater Interventions expo in United States in February this year. US navy, which is a participant, was all praise for our product and actually am in touch with them for any technical assistance. They also now plan to start a bio-inspired robotics programme,” Santhosh said.

Rajagopal, who is also the director of Plany’s Technologies, a spin-off start-up providing robotic services to port and shipping industry, said the product was still at preliminary stage and needed a lot of on-field testing to address several practical problems that might arise, but all the basics are covered. An autonomous version would be ready in a few months.

The novelty of the Duli is bio-inspired tail that could be used for rapid long motion which is eco-friendly. It will do sensitive jobs like surveying coral reefs without causing any disturbance to marine life. The mechanical pectoral thrusters are used only for manoeuvring. Usually bio-inspired designs suffer from complexities in control systems such as under-actuation, lower manoeuvrability.

Rajagopal said optimal shape of the caudal fin and its driving mechanism is currently being researched using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations validated by experiments. Efforts are on to improve the hydrodynamic and mechanical dynamic performance of the vehicle with an improved hull design for robustness in a wide variety of applications.

http://www.newindianexpress.com/cit...tention-of-DRDO/2016/07/13/article3526462.ece

@amardeep mishra : IITM stuff..nice one

Poor guy... Got the wrong people's attention

Anyway great job..

 

[Tshering22]

Poor guy... Got the wrong people's attention

Anyway great job..

Indian Navy will rather import the same thing from Europe or US when he sells it for a huge money or joins a fancy company who offers him the due recognition and a good job.

 

[amardeep mishra]

@PARIKRAMA
Yes they do a lot of such stuff in ED(engineering design dept).In fact they designed a complete under water rover there. However this guy as i can see,is from mechanical. Even in my dept a lot of activities are going on. Some of them are really cool. I too do a lot of hobby electronics ranging from arduino,raspberry pi to sensor networks in my free time.
@JamD
In the following picture I tried Implementing OPTIMAL CONTROL in my raspberry pi using IPOPT solver.I tried to find optimal control trajectories when the cost function happens to be the mass of fuel-i.e I had to find best possible trajectories(here trajectories refers to plots(plots of altitude,AoA,Mach No etc) against the range and not against the traditional time!) such that fuel consumption is minimized!

In the pic below one can see that for optimal fuel consumption the aircraft must first go up and then remain slightly coming down and remaining at that height for almost the entire journey.

To do the following I had to first compile IPOPT solver from the source code that i found on git. I then had to define my problem in python and then pass it onto IPOPT- for this i used cyipopt.

 

[SQ8]

I have always found that the next step in the cat & mouse game of underwater warfare is propulsion that is based on that of marine creatures. Signal processing for sonars has gotten to a point that individual blades can be "imaged" and identified.

 

[jaiind]

grt initiation by IITians.with little assistance of DRDO they would make it more adaptable machine in under water autonomous robot