Multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are operated by a host platform by configuring the AUVs with intermediate nodes (such as unmanned surface vehicles (USVs)) so as to allow the host platform to manage multiple AUVs. The intermediate nodes act as a relay for communications between the host platform and the AUVs allowing the host platform to scale to higher numbers of vehicles thus simultaneously operating the entire fleet of AUVs. The AUVs may provide underwater mapping data. The host platform may be stationary. The host platform may communicate with the intermediate nodes by satellite.

A method comprising: providing an autonomous vehicle (AV) with a first estimated position of a target; directing the AV to travel toward the first estimated position at a constant velocity; receiving echo signals of transmitted sonar signals, the echo signals indicating a range and an azimuth of the target; determining a depth difference of the AV and the target based on the received echo signals, the depth difference being determined based on changes to the range and azimuth of the target over time; and in response to a depth difference existing, re-directing the AV toward a second estimated position of the target generated from the depth difference.

An integrated method and system for communication, positioning, navigation, and timing of a deep-sea vehicle. The method implements integration and deep fusion of communication, positioning, navigation, and timing, and can achieve uniformity of space references and time references between sensors and systems, can reduce difficulty in information fusion, and can implement convenient underwater acoustic communication, real-time/high-update-rate/low-power-consumption/high-precision positioning, high-precision/fault-tolerant navigation, and precise timing. The present invention implements simultaneous operation of four working modes: communication, positioning, navigation, and timing, to fundamentally resolve problems such as insufficient practicability of underwater acoustic communication, low accuracy of navigation and positioning, and no timing function, so as to improve underwater operation efficiency of a deep-sea vehicle.

An intelligent cleaning robot comprises a housing, an optical module, a pickup module, a central processing module, and a drive module. The housing defines light transmission holes for the optical module, which comprise an infrared light source, a complex light source, a structure light lens to receive reflected infrared light through the holes to form a three-dimensional image, and a color lens to receive reflected light through the holes to form a color image. The central processing module can receive the three-dimensional image and the color image and form an image of an environment. The pickup module can be controlled to pick up garbage and objects in the environment according to the image of an environment, and the robot can be controlled to move on land or in water.

Provided are an apparatus and a method of controlling swimming for a robotic fish. The robotic fish, which is operated in a narrow space like an aquarium, often hits the outer wall during submerging or upwardly swimming. In order to solve this problem, the present invention provides an inclination adjusting means, which adjusts the inclination while generating the rotational propulsive force, it is possible to do smooth submergence and upwardly swimming in the narrow space.

Embodiments of the present invention provide a navigation system which, on the one hand, is arranged on sides of the underwater vehicle/AUV and, on the other hand, includes a surface transmitter as a counterpart. The two units communicate with each other such that the surface transmitter emits its signal directed to the position of the underwater vehicle and/or that the surface transmitter follows the underwater vehicle to improve the position determination capability.

An operating method of an underwater robot based on ultrasonic radar, an underwater robot and a non-volatile storage medium is described. The method comprises: controlling the underwater robot to travel in a first direction from any first position at a bottom of a pool to a second position close to a wall of the pool based on an electrical signal from the ultrasonic radar; controlling the underwater robot to travel from the second position along the wall to a third position to generate an along-wall path; comparing the along-wall path with a pool bottom model, and determining the position information of the third position in the pool bottom model; and controlling the underwater robot to travel along a spiral path starting from the third position to traverse the whole bottom based on the position information.

A method and apparatus for positioning a mobile robot inside a vertical cylindrical Aboveground Storage Tank filled with a liquid is described. No additional hardware is needed other than the robot itself. The only piece of information needed is the tank's diameter which is known by construction. The robot carries proprioceptive sensors needed to propagate its position estimate as well as exteroceptive sensors needed to control the dead reckoning positional drift. Proprioceptive and exteroceptive data are merged using data fusion algorithms adapted to the sensor suite integrated in the vehicle, which can take different forms.

The present disclosure provides a method of automatic docking a pool cleaning robot, a pool cleaning robot, an electronic device and a computer storage medium. In the method, a pool cleaning robot is placed into a pool; when a docking instruction is received, a closest pool wall relative to the pool cleaning robot is determined; and the pool cleaning robot is enabled to move towards the closest pool wall.

A method of locating a remotely operated vehicle within a workspace includes the steps of: receiving a video feed of the workspace from a video camera; processing the video feed to identify landmarks and features of known physical structures in or near the workspace; determining a correlation between the features and landmarks and known physical structures; calibrating the video feed from the camera to the known physical structures using the correlation; determining the location in the calibrated video feed of a number of fiducial markers on the remotely operated vehicle; and determining the position of the remotely operated vehicle within the workspace using the location of the number of fiducial markers in the calibrated video feed.