The last decade has witnessed increasing worldwide interest in the research of underwater robotics with particular focus on the area of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). The underwater robotics technology has enabled human to access the depth of the ocean to conduct environmental surveys, resources mapping as well as scientific and military missions. This capability is especially valuable ...

It is believed that the lateral line found in most fish and some other aquatic organisms plays an important role in many behaviors by providing hydrodynamic information about the surrounding fluid. In this paper, a lateral line inspired underwater vehicle control design is proposed with a feedforward element from pressure sensor arrays; the goal of this research is to improve maneuvering accura...

A general fuzzy logic control framework along with its application specific modifications is presented to support, evaluate and justify the proposed perspective to unmanned vehicle autonomous navigation. The paper discusses successful applications of collision free motion control of ground, aerial and underwater unmanned vehicles navigation. The common characteristic in all applications regardl...

This paper addresses adaptive, on-line path planning of an autonomous underwater vehicle and presents a GA-based method for it. It is an important module of SAUVIM (Semi-Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for Intervention Missions) which is being developed at the University of Hawaii and will be capable of exploring the ocean at up to 6,000 m depth. In SAUVIM, a genetic algorithm (GA) is employed in...

We present an algorithm for underwater robots to visually detect and track human motion. Our objective is to enable human-robot interaction by allowing a robot to follow behind a human moving in (up to) six degrees of freedom. In particular, we have developed a system to allow a robot to detect, track and follow a scuba diver by using frequencydomain detection of biological motion patterns. The...

The Norwegian Experimental Remotely Operated Vehicle (NEROV) is described. The vehicle is designed and built at the Department of Engineering Cybernetics , The Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH). The NEROV vehicle is an unmanned autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) especially designed for testing advanced intelligent and conventional control algorithms. The vehicle is autonomous with respec...

Ocean fronts are productivity hot spots, supporting marine life from plankton to whales. These dynamic systems contain a vast amount of information, and have the potential to significantly expand our knowledge of aquatic ecosystems in relation to climate change. However, ocean fronts and other dynamic features cannot be studied through conventional oceanographic techniques. In this paper, we ad...

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,...