Detection of Shipborne Charging Components and Docking of Shore-Based Manipulator Based on MobileNetV2

To realize the autonomous charging of unmanned surface vessels(USVs), a method based on MobileNetV2 was proposed for the detection of shipborne charging components and the docking of shore-based manipulators. Firstly, binocular camera D435i was employed to collect RGB and depth maps as inputs and MobileNetV2-based detection network was utilized to estimate the position and attitude of charging components. Then, the position and attitude of the charging components in the coordinate system of the manipulator base were calculated by coordinate transformation. Subsequently, the charging plug at the end of the manipulator was driven close to the charging component to achieve a preliminary docking. Finally, the docking strategy was adopted to search for the internal holes for final docking. In this study, an experimental platform for docking charging components was built in a real environment to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The charging components of USVs could be accurately identified by this method. Besides, the manipulator completed the docking of the charging plug and the charging components under the control of the proportional-differential torque control strategy based on gravity compensation, providing a new idea for the autonomous charging of USVs.