A practical and useful autonomous towed vehicle for port area inspection

This paper presents a novel underwater vehicle for port area inspection, which has various navigation modes (towed mode, autonomous mode and kite mode) to stand against fast and changeable sea currents. The property assures safe and reliable observation performance irrespective of current speed. Since in a port area sea currents are fast and complex, such a vehicle must be practical and useful for port area application. The unique point of the vehicle is the employment of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) as a towed vehicle. In general, AUVs and towed vehicles are mutually contradictory. This paper describes the process of development to achieve the three different navigation modes. The system components and the results of computer simulations and towing tank tests to investigate the stability of the vehicle are presented. In addition, results of the first sea trial are also presented. These results show that the vehicle can navigate stably in the three different navigation modes.

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