From Extended Environment Perception Toward Real-Time Dynamic Modeling for Long-Range Underwater Robot

Underwater robots are critical observation platforms for diverse ocean environments. However, existing robotic designs often lack long-range and deep-sea observation capabilities and overlook the effects of environmental uncertainties on robotic operations. This article presents a novel long-range underwater robot for extreme ocean environments, featuring a low-power dual-circuit buoyancy adjustment system, an efficient mass-based attitude adjustment system, flying wings, and an open sensor cabin. After that, an extended environment perception strategy with incremental updating is proposed to understand and predict full hydrological dynamics based on sparse observations. On this basis, a real-time dynamic modeling approach integrates multibody dynamics, perceived hydrological dynamics, and environment-robot interactions to provide accurate dynamics predictions and enhance motion efficiency. Extensive simulations and field experiments covering 600 km validated the reliability and autonomy of the robot in long-range ocean observations, highlighting the accuracy of the extended perception and real-time dynamics modeling methods.