Smaller autonomous underwater vehicles that use differential thrust for surge and yaw motion control has the advantage of low cost and, at the same time, increased ma­ neuverability in yaw direction. However, since such vehicles are underactuated vehicles, design of an autonomous control system that enables the vehicle to autonomously track a predefined trajectory is challenging. In this paper,...

Autonomous docking using underwater vehicles will play an important role in long-term underwater explorations and surveys. The autonomous docking mission for an autonomous underwater vehicle at a stationary platform involves a vehicle and a platform matching both position, orientation and velocity. The docking missions therefore require intelligent control systems for precise and soft operation...

The main problem in bringing autonomy to any vehicle lies in the design of a suitable guidance law. For a truly autonomous operation, the vehicle needs to have a reliable Navigation, Guidance and Control (NGC) system of which the guidance system is the key element, which generates suitable trajectories to be followed. In this survey paper, various guidance laws found in the literature and their...

This paper presents the design of the electronics, the sensor data processing scheme and the implementation of the behaviour based control for a small autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). The robot has a volume of 12dm and is used as a demonstration vehicle for underwater ai-technologies. The thruster configuration allows the μAUV to hover and its active light sensors enable obstacle detection ...