Development of a versatile test-bed "Twin-Burger" toward realization of intelligent behaviors of autonomous underwater vehicles

A versatile test-bed named "the Twin-Burger" was developed at the Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo to establish the techniques which realize intelligent behaviors of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Construction of the vehicle was completed and it was launched in November 1992. This paper describes hardware and software systems of the vehicle in detail. Motion of the vehicle is controlled by sliding controllers based on simplified equations of motion which are derived from system identification experiments. Several tank tests were carried out to investigate the controllers\´ performance. It is shown that the vehicle successfully cruises along a commanded path as a sequence of control actions which are generated by the sliding controllers.