Autonomous underwater vehicle AQUA EXPLORER 1000 for inspection of underwater cables

This paper describes the outline and the summary of an autonomous underwater robot "AQUA EXPLORER 1000" (AE1000) for inspection of underwater telecommunication cables. AE1000 can find and track buried underwater cables with a cable tracking sensor, and record the view of the seafloor on a built in video cassette recorder (VCR). A high-bit-rate acoustic link for video-signal transmission is also newly developed, that enables the operator to monitor the seafloor in real-time. Five sea trials have been carried out since 1992, in which we succeeded in the continuous tracking of real underwater telecommunication tables over 2.6 kilometers. The object of the project, basic design, performance, and the results of sea trials are discussed.