Low-cost Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for underwater Acoustic Inspections

Abstract

The design considerations of a low-cost Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) are presented in this article. Periodic surveys are needed in the preventive maintenance of submarine structures of offshore industries. The advantages of performing them with AUVs instead of Remote Operated Vehicles (ROV ) or Towed Unmanned Devices are the lower costs involved and a better data quality in the inspection missions. Through EU funded projects (AUVI and Autotracker), and Spanish funded project IOGECS, the construction of a low-cost prototype for depths of 100m AUV was initiated. Previous results and design considerations and proposed solutions, as well as a description of the hardware employed, the sensors in the payload, and the mission replanning, are described in this work.