The involvement of autonomous underwater vehicles for patrolling, monitoring or maintenance activities of submersed structures in the coastal strip, harbors or in proximity of off-shore plants (e.g. in oil& gas and military fields), can represent a high benefit for the economy of the related areas. For instance, continuous or more frequent monitoring can be possible, with a reduction of the necessary costs: The use of remotely operated vehicles with the linked implication of support ships and specialized pilots, or the involvement of professional divers, could be avoided or significantly reduced. The paper describes the FeelHippo autonomous underwater vehicles, the vehicle designed and built by the MDM Lab of the University of Florence; it is a low cost autonomous underwater vehicles suitable for these purposes. In particular, an onboard acoustic localization system, based on a low cost approach, has been implemented and preliminary experimental results are here reported.
WilliamsSBPizarroORJakubaMV. Monitoring of Benthic reference sites: Using an autonomous underwater vehicle. IEEE Robot Autom Mag2012; 19: 73-84.
5.
AllottaBContiRCostanziR. Modelling and control of an autonomous underwater vehicle for mobile manipulation. In: Multibody dynamics 2013 congress (ECCOMAS), Zagreb, Croatia, 1–4 July 2013, http://eccomas-multibody.fsb.hr/
6.
AlvarezACaffazACaitiA. Folaga: A low-cost autonomous underwater vehicle combining glider and AUV capabilities. Ocean Eng2009; 36: 24-38.
BreivikMFossenTI. Guidance-based path following for autonomous underwater vehicles. In: Proceedings of the oceans’05, Washington DC, 18–23 September 2005, http://washington05.oceansconference.org/
9.
PetresCPailhasYPatronP. Path planning for autonomous underwater vehicles. IEEE Trans Robot2007; 23: 331-341.
CostanziRFanelliFMonniN. An attitude estimation algorithm for mobile robots under unknown magnetic disturbances. IEEE ASME Trans Mechatron21: 1900–1911.
14.
AllottaBCostanziRMonniN. Design and simulation of an autonomous underwater vehicle. In: Proceedings of the European congress on computational methods in applied sciences and engineering, ECCOMAS 2012, Vienna, Austria, 10–14 September 2012, http://eccomas2012.conf.tuwien.ac.at/
ForouherDHartmannJLitzaM. Sonar-based FastSLAM in an underwater environment using walls as features. In: Proceedings of the 15th international conference on advance robotics, ICAR 2011, Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, Estonia, 20–23 June 2011, http://www.icar2011.org/
21.
RibasDNeiraPTardJ. SLAM using an imaging sonar for partially structured underwater environments. In: Proceedings of the international conference on intelligent robots and systems, IEEE IROS 2006, Beijing, China, 9–15 October 2006, http://www.iros2006.org/
WangYShaoSWangS. Measurement error analysis of multibeam echosounder system mounted on the deep-sea autonomous underwater vehicle. Ocean Eng2014; 91: 111-121.
24.
MarinaGGRibasDRidaoP. A global localization system for structured environments using an imaging sonar. In: IFAC conference on control in marine systems, Croatia, IFAC CAMS 2007, Grand Hotel Elaphusa, Bol, Croatia, 19–21 September 2007.
