Development of an autonomous buoy system for AUV

In this paper, we introduce a newly developed autonomous buoy system that enables remote monitoring of an AUV. The buoy system has a dynamic positioning function and can track the target AUV. Using an acoustic data link and a radio data link, the buoy can relay the messages between the AUV and the surface monitoring system of the AUV. The first sea trial was successfully performed in October 2014.