The 4500-meter sea trial of the deep-sea multifunctional mobile operating system of the Institute of Deep-sea Studies, Chinese Academy of Sciences was successful.

CCTV News:Yesterday (May 11th), two types of equipment — — Deep-sea floating mobile operating system and deep-sea crawling mobile operating system successfully completed the 4,500m-class sea test in the South China Sea, and passed the assessment of the on-site expert group.

According to the introduction of the Deep Sea Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, these two types of equipment were established in 2019, and it took four and a half years to complete the research and development, respectively, to achieve complementary functions for two different application scenarios in water and seabed.

The deep-sea floating mobile operation system adopts the split structure of repeater and floating platform. The repeater can observe the surrounding situation of floating platform in real time and operate at different water depths. The maximum working depth in this sea trial is 4543 meters, which will play a role in underwater oil field development, marine engineering and other fields.

The deep seabed crawling mobile operation system is designed as a crawler-type walking structure, which can move under the driving conditions of thin and soft sediments on the seabed, and realize the walking function of various complex conditions on the seabed by replacing different forms of crawler. The maximum depth of this sea trial is 4098 meters, and it is equipped with intelligent manipulator and seabed crushing and collecting module to carry out experiments, which will be applied to geological exploration and deep-sea mineral resources development in the future.

According to the researchers, these two types of operating systems have been equipped with localized systems for the first time. The winch, A-frame and other water support parts of the deployment recovery device, as well as key components such as thrusters, acoustic instruments, underwater lights and high-definition cameras have all been localized. The successful implementation of this sea trial has verified the independent innovation ability of this kind of equipment and the feasibility of domestic operation.

Xie Chao, Engineer, Institute of Deep Sea Science and Engineering, China Academy of Sciences:As a general platform for deep-sea scientific investigation, the two types of equipment in this sea trial can add two sharp tools for deep-sea operations in the future and further expand the scope and means of scientific investigation in the deep-sea field.