Experimental Study of Push Coring Forces During Sediment Extraction Using a Robot Manipulator

This work addresses the experimental study of the forces exerted during the extraction of sediment samples using push corers. The study aims to measure push and pull forces under different deployment conditions for corer speed and coring depth using sand, sandy silt and silt as sediment. To guarantee a repeatable automated process, a KUKA KR6 robot manipulator was used to extract the sample. The forces were measured using a bidirectional S-type load cell. The required data is extracted from the robot’s internal variables log and from the load cell’s data acquisition system. The raw data is processed to develop simplified models for the forces using linear regression which are further analyzed and tested. Finally, the results obtained are discussed in the context of core sampling and practical conclusions are drawn from the experiments.