Design And Implementation Of 20 Kilograms Portable Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV)

Autonomous Underwater Vehicle which represents the research direction of underwater robots in the future is a research hotspot around the world. Now AUV is becoming deeper in diving depth, smaller in size and more powerful in function, and especially with the mature of technology, the military need of sea battle and the commercial requirement of offshore industry, small AUV begins to appear and continues to develop and grow. WHOI's REMUS 100 and Hafmynd's GAVIA are the successfully and outstandingly commercialized AUV.This paper, based on the summary of the above AUVs'success, proposes the design idea of"low-cost portable small AUV". In detail, the paper designs a universal, portable and in some extent configurable small AUV, and carries out in-depth study aimed at the mechanical system and electrical system and also does some preliminary work aimed at AUV autonomous navigation technology in order to lay the foundation of mechanical system and electrical system's improvement and autonomous navigation technology's in-depth research in the future.For mechanical system design, the AUV adopts torpedoes-shaped streamline structure to realize the design goal of light weight, small size, wide range of activities and perfect mobility. Meanwhile, in order to improve the reliability of motion control, the AUV uses two propellers which are arranged vertically. Finally, the AUV meets the design goals in all aspects, such as ability of housing pressure, watertight connection and fluid dynamics. For electrical system design, it can be divided into several modules, such as main controller, parameter monitoring circuit, battery management circuit, sensor circuit and motor drive circuit, the modules communicate with each other by CAN bus. On this basis, the paper designs combined navigation algorithm based on GPS and INS. When the AUV is submerged, it can acquire position information by INS, after it floats to the surface, it can use GPS to calibrate INS to eliminate accumulated error. AUV course angle can be calculated by position information which at last can realize closed-loop PID control.