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Abstract

This paper describes the development of a cost effective mini autonomous underwater vehicle. The mini size of the vehicle is achieved by extracting the control module hardware out from the vehicle vessel and by reducing the on-board sensors. The control of the vehicle is conducted by a base station wirelessly telecommunicating with the vehicle. Furthermore, the reduction of the sensors also reduces the cost of the vehicle. For the purpose, in the vehicle, a single sensor featuring a CCD camera is mounted at the front of the vehicle. The images taken by this CCD camera are used both for obstacle avoidance and for underwater object searching. Experimental results show that the developed vehicle can successfully avoid the frontal obstacle while the operator in the base station can see the frontal view of the vehicle simultaneously. However, relative parameters of the image processing algorithm must vary for different time of the day and different whether. This implies that an adaptive image processing algorithm is necessary for operation in different situations.

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