Dynamic Modeling of Variable Ballast Tank
For Spherical Underwater Robot
Alok Agrawal, Bhuneshwar Prasad, Vinothkumar Viswanathan, and S. K. Panda
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore
Abstract— Under-water exploration and surveillance requires
a significant amount of onboard power for unmanned under-
water vehicles (UUVs). The main focus of researchers and
scientists is to design small, versatile UUVs, which can relax the
power requirement onboard and hence increase the mission time.
The paper proposes to develop a spherical underwater robot that
can employ a docking or soft grounding behavior. To obtain this
mechanism the spherical underwater robot should have the
capability of self-ballast. By optimally positioning itself and
sitting on the bottom, the spherical underwater robot can be
placed in sleep mode, with only monitoring sensors awake,
thereby harvesting power from the water current through
dynamo based rotor blades. After the evaluation of different
depth control strategies and research for commercially available
UUVs, a concept was found by several comparisons. A diving
system has been designed, built and implemented. Additionally, a
dynamic model of the diving system has been developed and
tested, allowing variable depth control. A Spherical Underwater
Robot (SUR) is designed to perform test runs in a test pool. The
development of the dynamic model is carried out by a simulation
implemented in the MATLAB / Simulink software platform.
Experimental test were conducted to validate the dynamic model.
Index Terms— UUV, variable buoyancy, ballast tank.
I. INTRODUCTION
D uring the past two decades, the underwater vehicle
technology has been growing tremendously. The main
focus of researchers and scientists is to design small, versatile,
unmanned under-water vehicles (UUVs), for missions such as
deep ocean survey, cable and pipeline tracking, military
applications, detailed mapping of sea floor for sub-sea
infrastructure or long term monitoring projects. This suggests
that these vehicles are provided with as much autonomy as
possible [1]-[3]. Several structures with different architectures
have been proposed in the past, however most of the work
focuses on torpedo like AUVs with streamlined body. The
streamlined body design offers lower drag and enhances the
speed of the vehicle. The sphere shape provides complete
symmetry and a soft, safe, and friendly look without any sharp
corners or protrusions, which is advantageous when a robotic
device deals with marine creatures. It has many characteristics
such as small size, light weight, high maneuverability and
noiselessness. Controlling the buoyancy of the SUR is
important to allow for heaving motion of the underwater
robot. When the robot is moving forward, zero buoyancy of
the robot is needed. Zero buoyancy is the condition when
weight force is equal to buoyant force. Therefore, variable
ballast mechanism is used to control the weight of the SUR. If
978-1-4673-4569-9/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE
Singapore
the specific density of the SUR is equal to specific density of
water, the SUR will be at neutrally buoyant state. If the
specific density of SUR is more than the specific density of
water, the SUR will submerge and vice-versa. The motivation
of this paper is to developing a low cost, simple, soft
grounding capability for a submersible SUR using ballast tank,
which could also further lead to the possibility of harvesting
oceanic water current energy as proposed later in the paper.
Once the robot is grounded at the water bed the rotors present
at the vertical axis starts operating and harvest energy from the
water current available. Many ballast mechanisms have been
developed by researchers such as M.Worall et al. [4], which
uses two ballast tanks placed at bow and aft position for
controlling the dynamic behavior of the underwater vehicle
using water pumps to maintain the weight balance by
controlling the water flow. Research works have also been
carried out on compressed air blast tanks, as used in
submarines and large underwater vehicles [5]-[6], water level
in the tank is controlled by high pressure compressed air,
where the compressor releases the high pressure air hence
causing decrease in water level of the tank and vice-versa.
Most of the research on ballast tank mechanism uses a fixed
volume tank, based on which other system design and
characteristics are developed. There will always be some
empty space left in the tank if the amount of water in the tank
is not maximum, which would cause instability to the system
whenever roll and pitch angles are changed that would shift
the center of mass of the system. This shortcoming in the
design has been catered to in the developed prototype, wherein
we have proposed to develop a system with the variable
ballast tank mounted at the central vertical axis leaving no
room for roll and pitch instability resulting from change in
water volume inside the ballast tank. The mechanism involves
a DC-motor driven piston tank which converts the rotational
motion of the motor to the linear motion of the piston shaft
such that suction and injection of water flow is created. A
dynamic model of variable ballast tank depth control system
has also been formulated based on which the hardware
prototype is developed.
The rest of the paper is arranged as follows. Section II
provides an overview of the SUR. Section III outlines the
comparison between the currently available static diving
systems. Modeling and design of variable ballast tank with
adjustable water volume is explained in Section IV. The
results obtained from the simulation model and underwater
testing of SUR are discussed and presented in Section V.
Finally, the research findings and future scope are outlined in
Section VI.
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 II. OVERVIEW OF THE SPHERICAL UNDERWATER VEHICLE
There are many types of SURs that are proposed by
organizations around the world, like autonomous underwater
vehicles developed by Hawaii University [1]-[2], Dish type
underwater robot by Harbin University [7]-[8]. But much of
the presented design and associated work is inspired by
vectored water-jet based spherical underwater vehicle by
Kagawa University Japan [9]. This paper puts forward a SUR,
which consists of three independently moving water-jet bilge
pump thrusters used as the propulsion system. A Waterproof
Cylinder (WC), with the feasibility of having variable
integrated sections, is used to store the electrical components
such as controller, batteries, sensors and ballast tank. The
water-jet bilge pumps and waterproof cylinder are mounted on
two circular discs which are fixed to the spherical hull as
shown in Fig.1. By the help of thrusters, surge and sway
control can be achieved and for the heave control ballast tank
mechanism is used.
The spherical dome is used to provide a closed profile to get
excellent maneuverability. The WC in the SUR is made of
Clear Acrylic. As seen in Fig 1.b, the WC contains multiple
discs which can be varied by threaded rods as per requirement
and size of the equipment. The height of the WC is 220mm
and diameter is 230mm. The WC contains one ARM-11
processor board with arduino controller, three lithium polymer
batteries to power the entire module, sensors such as IMU
(Inertial Measurement Unit) and pressure sensors. There is
also a ballast tank to control the heave movement of the
vehicle. The most important forces, acting on a rising or
diving body in a fluid, are gravity, static buoyancy and the
resistance of the surrounding fluid. If the body is moving
horizontally, a dynamic buoyancy force will be added. As the
body architecture is spherical in shape, the robot is perfectly
symmetrical, and for computation simplification the inside
structure is also symmetrical, therefore, only the buoyancy
force and gravity force in the direction of z-axis are
considered.
(a) (b)
Fig. 1. (a) Virtual design of spherical underwater robot (SUR) (b) Water
proof cylinder (WC) enclosure for electronics and ballast tank.
III. COMPARISON OF AVAILABLE DYNAMIC DIVING SYSTEM
For unmanned underwater vehicles, there are three kinds of
static diving systems available. Compressed gas, pumps or
59
electric motor are used to fill or empty the ballast tank.
Alternatively, rubber bags can also be used instead of tanks.
A. Compressed gas based Ballast tanks
Systems using compressed air to control the water flow in the
ballast tanks are rare to find. Equipment such as magnetic
valves and throttles are complex and costly. Submarines or big
size UUVs use onboard compressors to refill the pressure
tank. A version of a system without a compressor still needs
enough space for the pressure tank, its controllers and it is
furthermore limited in dive time. Due to the difficulties in
exact valve and throttle control, this system is often used for
rough diving maneuvers and supplemented by piston tanks for
better depth control.
B. Tube pumps based rubber membrane Ballast tank
Tube pumps based ballast tank mechanism is one of the
simpler and cheapest systems available. The tube pumps are
used to fill air into the rubber bags by which the overall
volume of the system increase or decreases and water flow
inside ballast tank can be varied accordingly. In this
mechanism, the water flow control is less accurate and flood
time is longer.
C. DC-motor driven Ballast tank
The piston tank driven by dc motor contains a power screw
attached to movable plate at one end and the other end of the
power screw is coupled with the gear mounted on the dc motor
Fig. 2. So when the motor rotates in the clock-wise direction
the power nut moves outward which allows the blast tank to
create a suction pressure hence water enters inside the ballast,
by which the overall weight of the system increase and the
robot can submerge. Similarly when the dc motor rotates in
the anti-clock wise direction the power nut moves inward
which created injection pressure hence the water stored inside
the ballast tank gets flushed out.
Fig. 2. Diving system with piston tanks driven by dc-motors
Based on the above ballast tank mechanisms, a comparison is
formulated to choose the ballast tank to be used for the SUR.
To choose the optimal type of dive system a weighting and
valuating criteria is established. For mathematical valuation,
points from 1(poor solution) to 3 (strong solution) were
assigned to each system criteria.
On the basis of following comparison, option of ballast tank
driven by compressed gas was eliminated due to limited
workspace of the hardware design. Further, the mentioned
weakness in precision and speed in using tube pumps led to
the decision to build a piston tank driven by DC-motor.
 Table 3.1 Comparison of dynamic diving system (2)
Tube pump based ̇ | ̇|
Compressed gas DC-motor driven
rubber membrane
based Ballast tank Ballast tank
Ballast tank The velocity achieved by the robot will depend on the change
Weightage Rating
Weighted
Rating
Rating
Weighted
Rating
Rating
Weighted
Rating
of weight inside the ballast tank. If the total mass changes as
Volume
much as from the initial total mass, , then
0.3 1 0.3 2 0.6 2 0.6
Utilization . Due to the motion of the SUR, a mass of water is
Weight Change
Rates
0.2 3 0.6 1 0.2 2 0.4 displaced along-with it, known as added mass . Also, due
Complexity 0.2 1 0.2 3 0.6 2 0.4 to acceleration a net force acts on the system.
(3)
Controllability 0.3 2 0.6 1 0.3 3 0.9 ̈

Total Weighted
Expanding and substituting in Eqn. (3), we get
1.7 1.7 2.3
Score (4)
̈ ( ) ̇ ̇| ̇|
IV. VERTICAL MOTION EQUATION AND BALLAST MODELING Where is the added mass given by:
(5)
The variable ballast tank is located at the lower side of the
WC. The ballast tank is mounted exactly at the center of the
is the radius of the spherical underwater robot.
lower disc of the cylinder, such that the center of mass and
At equilibrium condition i.e. the neutral buoyant state,
center of buoyancy are axially collinear. The overall center of
. This is the condition when the model stays
gravity of the system is lowered by arranging other
components such as the battery and electronic circuits on the afloat at a certain depth and its net weight is equal to buoyant
mounting discs inside the WC, so as to ensure stability of the force and ̈ Total mass change and the corresponding
system against undesirable pitching motion. weight change due to the change of the water in the ballast
The various forces acting on the SUR in the vertical plane tank is given by
have been illustrated in Fig.3. For a constant initial mass, the { (6)
force equilibrium equation for static condition can be given as, ( )
[10]
(1) Now, solving and substituting eqn. (6) in eqn. (4), the
acceleration of the system is obtained as
̇ ̇| ̇|
Water level
̈ [ ] (7)
z FB FR ( )
fa

ma
.
z v

FG
Fig.3. Forces acting on the spherical underwater robot
Fig.4. Ballast tank mechanism
where: Figure.4 represents the mechanism of power transmission in
the variable ballast system and also, the forces acting on the
moving piston. Initially, the ballast is kept half-filled so as to
maintain the system in a neutral buoyant state. In the above
̇ | ̇| figure, the water inside the ballast tank is represented by the
shaded region. The movable piston is actuated by a dc-motor
in m/s2 through gear reduction to provide the necessary torque needed
3 by the lead screw-nut pair. Change in position of the piston
in Kg/m
tank for angular velocity, is obtained as [11],
in m3 (8)
̇
in m2
̇ in m/s where is gear reduction between the motor and lead screw.
(no unit) Now, torque needed by the dc-motor to move the lead screw
to work against a force F is
Substituting these formulas into Eqn.1, yields
(9)

60
where is the coefficient of power transmission between the validate the numerical model a SIMULINK model is
motor and the lead screw which is during upward developed to observe the characteristics of the robot.
motion of screw while rising against a load and
during lowering motion while removing the water from the As discussed in the previous section, from Eqn. (19), for
tank. Net force acting on the piston of the ballast tank is weight change by modulation of water amount inside the
derived as ballast tank w.r.t the input power supply, a corresponding
depth position is achieved with the change in mass of the
(10) spherical underwater robot, at a certain heave velocity. The
Where , prototype is able to exhibit the heave motion at different
power profile.

Three different input power profiles are considered for the

is initial weight of ballast
simulation purpose to see the variations in the above
is change of weight in ballast mentioned characteristics. From Fig.5, it is seen that when the
is the hydrodynamic force depending on depth single pulse input power of 10 W is applied, weight change
is the force created due to change in pressure in the hull inside the piston increases gradually and reaches saturation
If , is the initial pressure and volume of the hull, then at and when the power is reset to zero, the weight change still
any instant corresponding to a volume change of , the holds the last value. The diving depth position of the spherical
equilibrium equation represented to determine is underwater robot increases progressively since the heave
velocity stays positive. When the supply input pulse is
( ) (11) negative, weight change inside the piston tank varies with the
present depth position of the robot. This fact is evident from
(12)
the Fig.6, wherein when a negative power is given at a starting
can also be expressed as depth of 10m, the weight change rate is much smaller to the
one when the robot has ascended to a shallower depth. The
(13)
reason for this variation is the higher hydrostatic force
Where and represent the height change and the area of experienced by the robot at greater depths. The last set of
variable ballast tank, respectively. results as shown in Fig.7 show the ability of the system to
Substituting the values of in Eq. (10), descend to a desirable depth and then reach to the surface back
again depending on the variable power profile input. This
(14)
provision is particularly necessary for the robot so as to
accomplish the proposed energy harvesting task.
[ ] (15)
Also, power input to the motor delivering a torque of at
a speed of is
(16)

Substituting the values of and from Eq. (15) and Eq. (8)
( [ ]) ̇ (17)
From Eq. (17), we can determine rate of weight change ̇ .
̇ ̇ (18)
Substitution of ̇ from Eq. (18) gives us
̇
( [ ]) (19)

As mentioned, Eq. (19) represents the rate of weight change

for ballast system which is then further adapted to calculate
the motion state of robot from Eq. (7) for calculating
acceleration ̈, velocity ̇ and hence the depth position .

V. DYNAMIC MODEL SIMULATION

After deriving the dynamic model, the equations are used in
MATLAB to verify the constructed model. Simultaneously the
Fig.5. System behavior for single pulse positive input power
spherical underwater robot prototype has been developed to
validate numerical simulation and physical experiment. To

61
 buoyant state to the test tank bed at a depth of 36 cm as
depicted in Fig.8 (e).

Tank Bed H=36 cm

(a) Positively Buoyant (Side View) (b) Positively Buoyant (Front View)

Tank Bed H=18 cm

(c) Neutrally Buoyant (Side View) (d) Neutrally Buoyant (Front View)

Fig.6. System behavior for single pulse negative input power

Tank Bed H=0 cm

(e) Negatively Buoyant (Side View) (f) Negatively Buoyant (Front View)
Fig.8. Experimental test setup for heave motion

Given the shorter test time of the setup, the plotted test data is
comparatively discontinuous with a total of 6 readings for one
experimental run, however, the test data shows the accuracy of
the developed model which is based on system parameters.
The test system operates in the current range of 0.85-1.0 Amp
at a supply voltage of 12 V, hence consuming power between
10-12 W for the actuation of ballast motor.

Fig.7. System behavior for varying input power

Fig.8 shows the various buoyant states for the developed robot
model in a real-time underwater testing. The states have been
represented in side as well as front view to bring out the
variation of underwater depth, particularly owing to the space
constraint of a smaller test tank. Fig.9 shows the results for a
comparative analysis of the results from hardware setup and
the delineated simulation model. Owing to the limitation of Fig.9. Comparative analysis of hardware system with dynamic model output
maximum depth of the test water tank i.e. 80 cm, the system a) Velocity b) Depth Position
run is carried out for a relatively shorter period of time of 40
seconds in which the system is able to go from the positively VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
In this paper a dynamic model is formulated on the developed robot, a ballast system was designed to substantiate its heaving
hardware system parameters to ascertain its heaving velocity motion. Experimental tests show that the buoyancy control as
and reachable depth positions for various power profile inputs. explained in the simulations has been realized on the prototype
Based on the developed model of the spherical underwater developed which validates the efficacy of the system.

62
 From the dynamic model it is seen that there is a
compromise to be made between the velocity of heaving and
power expended for change of weight. So in order for the
robot to accomplish a particular altitude profile under various
on-board energy scenarios, an optimization model will be
developed to minimize the net energy consumption for the set
profile which may include harvesting energy via the proposed
docking mechanism. In the energy harvesting mode, as shown
in Fig. 10, the robots will come out of their surveillance mode,
and dock together aligned to the water current, to begin with
on-board energy storage. The robots are designed to have
Collaborative
task (A)
(a)
(b)
Fig.10. (a) Virtual prototype design representation of Spherical Underwater robots performing collaborative surveillance and (b) Energy Harvesting mode
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63
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retractable clefts, which are operated open during harvesting
mode only, beneath which rotatory turbines are mounted to
utilize the oceanic current energy; to support the on-board
available energy during longer mission periods.
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