Deep-sea manganese nodules are abundant in the ocean, with high exploitation potential and commercial value, and have become mineral resources that coastal countries compete to develop. The pipeline-lifting mining system is the most promising deep-sea mining system at present. A deep-sea mining vehicle is the core equipment of this system. Mining quality and efficiency rely on mining vehicles to a great extent. According to the topographic and geomorphic environmental characteristics of deep-sea manganese nodules at the bottom of the ocean, a new deep-sea mining system based on an autonomous manganese nodule mining vehicle is proposed in this paper. According to the operating environment and functional requirements of the seabed, a new mining method is proposed, and the global traverse path planning research of the autonomous manganese nodule mining vehicle based on this mining method is carried out. The arc round-trip acquisition path planning method is put forward, and the simulation verification shows that the method effectively solves the problems of low efficiency of mining vehicle traversing acquisition and obstacle avoidance.
Keywords: autonomous manganese nodule mining vehicle; manganese nodule; obstacle avoidance algorithm; path planning; sweeping coverage.
Copyright © 2023 Xie, Liu, Chen, Liu, Leng, Pan and Shao.