Modelling and simulation of the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Robot

Abstract

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) have been used widely in the oceanic applications for many purposes, such as maritime fishery study, the installation of underwater pipelines in the oil and gas industry as well as to support offshore engineering, and mine hunting and defence applications. Projects in the development, manufacturing and testing of AUVs are complex, requiring a large investment of time, money and effort. Therefore, the simulation of the AUVs has been identified as being cost effective and time saving, as simulation is a vital step in understanding the behaviour and operation of the system before its actual deployment in the field. A number of subsystems must be considered for building a successful AUV simulator, these are the Inertial Navigation System (INS), Machine Vision, Sonar, Communication (underwater and on surface), and the Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) module systems. This paper discusses the methods and the outcomes of the feasibility study of the AUV simulator under investigation.