Development of Underwater Robot System for Autonomous Survey of Underwater Eco-Systems

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We have been constructing an innovative system for autonomous survey of underwater eco-systems using autonomous underwater vehicles. In the third year of this project, we developed a navigation system which detects the range and angle of wall in front of the vehicle using a vision system associated with Laser pointers which are fitted at the fore part of the testbed vehicle "Tri-Dog 1". The vehicle moves sideway keeping a constant range and angle to the wall based on the positions of the reflecting points of the pointers. This demonstrates extremely high accuracy of positioning comparing to the system based on the acoustic system. In parallel with this development, we deployed "Tantan" which was constructed for lake survey, and examined its efficiency. Based on the operational results, the software system of Tantan was modified for better reliability.