海底探査掘削ロボットのための水噴射排土機構の提案

抄録

Valuable seabed mineral resources such as rare earth elements are deposited 2–3 meters into the deep sea floor, and sampling and analyzing the seafloor is necessary to clarify how they are generated and distributed. The current general sampling method based on vertical drilling effectively acquires the geological profile in the vertical direction. However, it is inefficient for investigating deposits widely distributed in the horizontal direction because the sampling range is limited to the diameter of the pipe. We are developing a seafloor robotic explorer that can excavate horizontally and collect samples of rare earth elements, which may enable wide-area exploration as multiple robots could be simultaneously implemented to autonomously search beneath the seabed. The excavation depth of our previously reported underwater drilling robot SEAVO II was limited to 430 mm; the discharging outlet became buried in the ground, making it difficult to discharge the drilled soil and ultimately limiting the excavation depth. In this work, we introduce a discharging mechanism that implements water jetting to improve the excavation depth.