ICTIOBOT-40 a low cost AUV platform for acoustic imaging surveying

GERARDO G. ACOSTA; DE PAULA, MARIANO; ALEJANDRO ROZENFELD; ROBERTO LERGSTRA; BRUNO MENNA; SEBASTIAN A. VILLAR; DE LA VEGA, ROBERTO J; ARRIEN, LUIS M.; IGNACIO CARLUCHO; CURTI, HUGO J.; AGUSTÍN ISASMENDI

Marseille

Congreso; OCEANS 2019 MTS/IEEE; 2019

IEEE - MTI

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) aresuitable platforms for a wide type of applications in the oceanicenvironment. These applications are developed in various fieldssuch as scientific surveying, off-shore industry and defense. Theemployment of AUVs requires less human support and reducesoperation costs. Due to the changing marine environment thesevehicles must deal with uncertain and hostile conditions toperform its tasks. In the marine robotics matter, theINTELYMEC group has developed in 2012 an AUV prototypecalled Ictiobot, a low cost experimental platform for multipurposemissions. In this paper an upgrade of the original prototype ispresented, the Ictiobot-40, conceived to perform acoustic imagingsurveying missions of up to two hours and maximum depths of 40meters. The new software and hardware architectures andmechanical structure improvements, are detailed. In addition tothese technical details, initial experimental results of the AUVperformance in quiet waters will be discussed. Also, the newapproaches for systems under development are presented.