There has been an increased interest in autonomously operated underwater vehicles (AUV’s) in a number of fields. Examples include marine biology, mapping of the ocean floor, as well as inspection of pipelines and other marine infrastructure. Making an AUV is a complicated problem though, compared to a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV), and requires a variety of sensors and smart software. The ultimate goal of this series of projects is to convert a ROV into an AUV.
The ROV is an underwater vehicle based on the BlueROV kit from Blue Robotics.
It is equipped with six thrusters for movement in multiple degrees of freedom.
Most of the computations on the ROV are made on an a Raspberry Pi (RPi),
while an HKPilot Mega handles the collection of sensor data.
There is also connection to an external computer via an ethernet cable.
Several sensors are used for collecting data from the environment that is later
processed by the sensor fusion to estimate position, velocity, orientation and angular velocities.
The sensor setup consists of: three sonars, an inertial measurement unit (IMU), a magnetometer and a pressure sensor.
There is also a camera that is used to track objects and a newly added leakage sensor.
