HUGIN-AUV concept and operational experiences to date

Abstract

During the last few years autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) technology has evolved from concept demonstrators towards commercial products. The driving forces are the move for energy exploitation towards deeper waters, naval applications and the Internet driven need for more intercontinental underwater communication cables. Other applications emerging for the future will be within environmental research and monitoring and deepwater exploration.Deepwater developments beyond the continental shelf will require the same level of survey data quality and intervention access as established for shallow water. The potential for cost savings is two folds.Firstly, there is a reduction in the survey cost it self and secondly there is a considerable cost saving by avoiding over design of subsea installations due to lack of sufficient documentation of the field. In this scenario, there is an increasing understanding that underwater robotics and in particular AUVs will play an important role in future survey and subsea engineering work.The AUV as a free swimming underwater survey sensor carrier has several advantages compared to cable controlled ROV's and deep towed systems:The paper prepared for the OCEANS'O4, Kobe, Japan will focus on the HUGIN AUV concept and field results from the North Sea and GOM.

Exploring Underwater Environments with Curiosity

“…Although vehicles like Dorado [23] and Hugin [20] are extremely capable for long distance and deep water exploration, Aqua's propulsion is based on six flippers that can provide motion in five degrees of freedom is most suitable for tasks requiring high maneuverability, such as coral reef exploration. By using a novel combination of gaits, the Aqua can move at various speeds while maintaining its orientation, despite external disturbances [11], [21].…”

AUV Benthic Habitat Mapping in South Eastern Tasmania

“…Large, fast survey AUVs can provide high resolution acoustic multibeam and sub-bottom data by operating a few tens of meters off the bottom, even in deep water [6,10]. High resolution optical imaging requires the ability to operate very close to potentially rugged terrain.…”

Schooling for Multiple Underactuated AUVs

“…1. To date over 400 true AUVs have been built (Westwood et al, 2007) and most of them such as REMUS AUVs (Prestero, 2001) and HUGIN AUVs (Marthiniussen et al, 2004) have this type of mechanical structure. For this kind of underactuated underwater vehicles, their horizontal kinematics and dynamics can be expressed as following (Fossen, 2002;Li & Lee, 2008) , 0 (Fossen, 2002;Newman, 1977), they only have to take limited magnitude of velocities under the limited thrust force.…”