Underwater marking AUV using paraffin wax

It is still hard mission for human divers or robotic systems to investigate complex underwater environments, composed of several turning points and rooms. This paper explains a design of the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) for marking physical and visible path logs in water. Then, it will make the repeated exploration easier. For the solution of underwater marking, we chose to use paraffin wax which can be melted easily in the heated body of machine and also be hardened easily in water. This vehicle has a container for storing the bulk of paraffin wax filament, nozzle part for ejecting the filament, and cameras for detecting filament mark. The marking method is similar with Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) method of 3D printers. Nozzle motors extrude filament into nozzle, heating core melts it, and it comes out from the nozzle in water. As well as leaving a path mark, this AUV finds interesting places with real-time topic modeling algorithm and draws a circle-shaped mark, can be detected the next time on the point.