Hydrodynamics of simple robot arm/body configurations

The authors present hydrodynamics data for simple robot arm/body configurations. The long-term goal is to understand the hydrodynamics of subsea robots with multiple link arms undergoing arbitrary motions far from and close to subsea structures while being subjected to wave/current disturbances. For the present exploratory work, attention has been restricted to the drag torque on a single link arm/body configuration undergoing steady body translation and rotation. System parameter identification and neural network identification techniques were used to analyze the data. The goal was to find the data fit which was the most robust. The tank setup and data generated are described