Design and experiments of a deep-sea hydraulic manipulator system

Deep-sea master-slave hydraulic manipulator is among most commonly tools equipped on remotely-operated vehicles or human occupied vehicles. The design and realization of a 7-function master-slave hydraulic manipulator can be used in 7000 meters depth is proposed, and the design and control experiments of the salve arm are described in detail. Linear actuator, rotary actuator and cycloid motor are the three basic modules of the slave arm. The rotary actuator is the most difficult module to realize, a double-screw-pair swing rotary actuator is designed in this paper, which realized rotary driving, multi-path oil and electric cable passing through and rotary angle measuring. To achieve smooth control result, PI control algorithm with variable gains is applied on the control of the slave arm. Running experiments show the reliability of the manipulator system. The control algorithm is also certified effective in alleviating the movement delay and overshoot jitter of slave-arm.