A spherical robot based on all programmable SoC and 3-D printing

As the competition and exploration on marine is going more intense, intelligent underwater robots or autonomous underwater vehicles have become important tools to accomplish tasks such as ocean geologic survey, mineral exploration, victims rescue, military reconnaissance, etc. The mechanical structure and electronic control module design, which have long been research hotspots in this field, are in direct relation to the performance, reliability, maintainability and deployment ability of underwater robots. Existing designs commonly develop the body of robots with a large quantity of components or parts and realize information processing and motion control by using multiple kinds of electronic devices. This paper proposed a novel technical solution for underwater robots design. 3-D printing technology was adopted to construct the body of our spherical amphibious robots directly, which eliminated manufacturing difficulty, shortened the production cycle and improved water-tightness. Xilinx Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC was used to integrate motor control, sensor management, data acquisition and other functional units or circuits into a single chip. Moreover, a universal FMC slot for high speed board and four PMod sockets for low speed modules were provided on the mother board of the electronic control module to expand functions, upgrade hardware or install scientific instruments for special missions. By introducing 3-D printing and latest SoC technologies, the system complexity of the spherical robot was significantly reduced, which improved reliability. Meanwhile, the design room for intelligent robots was broadened with modular design and all programmable SoC. The design in this paper may have reference value for multipurpose underwater robots or vehicles.