Development Of A Testbed Of Underwater Mobile Sensing Network

An underwater mobile sensing network (UMSN) which consists of aswarm of acoustically linked and cooperative autonomous underwatervehicles (AUV's) with onboard sensors, can combine with fixed observatorynetworks, e.g. seafloor observatory networks and moored buoy arrays, toform a comprehensive observation network with a strong spatial coverageability. UMSN involves many key technologies, e.g. coordination andcooperation of multi-AUV based on acoustic communication, but few havebeen verified via field tests. The main reason for this phenomenon lies in thehigh cost of construction and operation of a true UMSN.In order to verify key technologies involved in an UMSN, a low costtestbed has been developed for experimental study. This testbed comprises awater surface monitoring system and three low cost AUV's. Each AUV isconfigured with an embedded PC104 computer, navigation equipment,motion sensors and an underwater acoustic modem, and has autonomy to agreat extent. Comprised by several acoustically linked low-cost AUV's, thistestbed can be applied to evaluate the novel techniques of an UMSN in awater tank.The development of the testbed, which includes overall design,mechanical design, electrical design and control system design, are introducedin this paper. Moreover the results of functional tests for verification of theeffectiveness of the testbed are presented.