Autonomous underwater vehicle "R2D4" - autonomous route change system in response to environmental anomaly

This paper presents the outline of autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) "R2D4" for survey of seabed in deep water. This project has been started in 2001. The new vehicle was launched in May 2003. The vehicle is 4.4 m long, 1.4 tons in weight, can dive to 4,000 m deep and has many payload sensors. As a special feature of the "R2D4", it possesses a function which can autonomously modify its navigation course in order to execute detailed investigation when an environmental anomaly is detected, which is judge by its main computer based on data obtained from the payload sensors.