Design and Development of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) with Target Acquisition Mission Module

An autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is an untethered submerged platform that moves freely with some degrees of a self-sufficient task. The AUV navigates itself while carrying out a predefined task, and it has a locally available power supply and other devices such as sensors and actuators. This paper presents the design and development of an AUV that able to navigate autonomously, and capable of detecting an underwater target using a vision sensor. In order to perform the navigation and target acquisition tasks, the AUV required autonomous guidance and control system. The AUV used two thrusters to control horizontal motion with the guidance of a digital magnetic compass, one thruster to control vertical motion with the assistance of a depth sensor, and a Pixy CMU cam5 as the vision sensor to detect the targeted object. The Target Navigation Mission Module (TNMM) has been developed to identify and detect the target, coordinate the state of the AUV, and decides on the path based on the mission time elapsed. Kalman filter algorithm is used to estimate the state of the navigation system. The AUV has been tested in a swimming pool to test its stability, functionality, and reliability. The simulation and experimental results show satisfactory performance and the AUV able to operate and acquire target successfully.