Development and Testing of a Low Cost Educational Test-Bed Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for Shallow Water Observation

This paper presents a low cost, small size autonomous underwater vehicle as an educational test-bed, designed for maneuvering in shallow water environment (canals and rivers), for water quality monitoring and bioacoustics recording. Sensor payload includes a forward-looking camera for obstacle avoidance, raspberry pi based home-built auto-recorder for bioacoustics recording, pH meter for water quality assessment, a GPS module (NEO-6M) and 9 DOF IMU (GY-85) for navigation and localization while the vehicle is controlled by two on board processors (raspberry pi and Arduino Mega). The developed vehicle is a hovering type AUV and has a light weight and compact physical and electrical design. AUV hull is cylindrical steel, with a length of 17 inch, 3.5 inch radius and net weight of 12.5 kg (extensible to 13.5kg with additional sensor load when needed) with the maximum depth rating of 20m and developed for a budget around $500.