Semi-Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for Intervention Missions (SAUVIM)

NEW: Visit the SAUVIM Website.

SAUVIM is for 6,000m depth. It has a robotic arm, various on-board sensors, batteries, VxWorks real-time controller, multi CPUs, and various advanced software.

Objective :
The primary research objective is to develop a Semi-Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for Intervention Missions (SAUVIM). Unlike the fly-by autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), SAUVIM will have a manipulator work package. It will require an advanced control system and a precise sensory system to maintain high accuracy in station keeping and navigation.

Background:
Most intervention missions, including underwater plug/unplug, construction & repair, cable streaming, mine hunting, and munitions retrieval- require physical contact with the surroundings in the unstructured, underwater environment. Such operations always increase the level of risk and present more difficult engineering problems than fly-by and non-contact type operations. For these intervention operations, the vehicle requires a dexterous robotic manipulator; thus the overall system becomes a high degree-of-freedom (dof), multi-bodied system from the coupling effects of the high degreee of accuracy even in the presence of unknown, external disturbances, i.e. undersea currents. All these issues present very complex engineering problems that have hindered the development of AUVs for intervention missions. Currently, the state-of-the-art in machine intelligence is insufficient to create a vehicle of full autonomy and reliability, especially for intervention missions.

Development :

For detailed information about SAUVIM development please visit the dedicated website:

http://www.eng.hawaii.edu/~asl/Sauvim

Last updated November 6, 2008