Issues in the Design of Marine Vehicles A Needs Based Analysis

Over the last two and a half decades, the design of both Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and Autonomous Surface Vessels have matured considerably as the original academic and commercial designs have been deployed in the field. In the case of AUVs, the designs typically came from the scientific community based on fundamental theoretical principles that, in most cases, were well understood and easy to formulate. Numerous companies now provide off the shelf solutions across a variety of scales and application areas. Most of the offerings are very similar with torpedo shaped vehicles and depth ratings that are standard in the ranges 100m, 1500m-3000m, and 4500-6000m. In this paper we look instead at some of the evolving designs and challenges facing the AUV/ASV technologies. Some of these challenges such as docking have been around for two and a half decades. Other challenges include the disruptive forces associated with technologies such as hobby electronics and IoT (the internet ofthings). The focus of this paper is to look at a number of examples of AUVs and ASVs that are typically nontraditional in terms of their design and how they evolved to fit their respective niches. Examples of such concepts include the original ABE, Seabed and Sentry vehicles at WHOI and the hybrid AUV/ROV technologies that were also pioneered there. We extend our analysis to look at Autonomous Surface Vessels to point out how the Jetyak Autonomous Surface Vessel (ASV) came to be and why it and ASVs such as the Wave Glider are unique platforms and the design lessons we can learn from them. Finally, we present a taxonomy of vehicles and applications across multiple, mostly orthogonal axes. This analysis highlights two important issues for the field physical constraints that are hard limiting factors, and areas where future innovations may arise. The axes along which we conduct this exercise include endurance (battery capacity), spatial sampling scales (cm to 100s of kilometers), temporal sampling scales (sub second to hours, days, weeks, and months), depth rating, manipulation capabilities, and docking technologies.