An Experimental Validation of Robotic Tactile Mapping in Harsh Environments such as Deep Sea Oil Well Sites

This work experimentally validates the feasibility of a tactile exploration approach to map harsh environments such as deep sea oil well sites. The recent collapse of the offshore oil-­drilling platform Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico resulted in the largest marine accidental disaster in history. Initial attempts to control the spill failed be-­ cause of the very challenging environmental conditions. Knowing the shape and dimen-­ sions of the cracks in the leaking structure could have provided critical information to ma-­ neuver the Remotely Operated Vehicles. Here, a method developed in our previous work for tactile exploration of oil wells is applied to the problem of mapping underwater disaster sites. This method only requires a manipulator provided with joint encoders, and does not need any range, tactile or force sensor. This makes the approach robust and directly appli-­ cable to the mapping of underwater sites. This paper focuses on the experimental validation of the approach. Several experiments are described, showing the effectiveness of the ap-­ proach in mapping unknown structured environment in short time, and demonstrating its re-­ liability under very harsh conditions, such as irregular environment surfaces, surrounding viscous fluids and high manipulator joint backlash.