Today, we would like to give you some insights into experimental research in underwater robotics. A typical task here is to identify the so-called hydrodynamic parameters, which describe the fluid influence on the robot.
Gunnar Maerker, one of our team members, is writing his bachelor thesis on the identification of the hydrodynamic parameters for the HippoCampus robot. He is specifically interested in the damping and the added mass influence of the fluid. These are important for developing control methods. In order to identify the hydrodynamic parameters Gunnar is conducting towing experiments in our tow tank, followed by a mathematical analysis of the sensor data.