Design elements of a small low-cost autonomous underwater vehicle for field experiments in multi-vehicle coordination

Field operations with multiple autonomous underwater vehicles are often expensive and logistically complex, yet the development of decentralized control and estimation algorithms suitable for cooperating autonomous vehicles requires in situ testing and experimentation. Toward the goal of creating a field-deployable testbed for multi-vehicle control and estimation algorithms, a small, inexpensive autonomous underwater vehicle has been developed. Design features of the AUV are presented along with design trade-offs imposed by developing an AUV that is small, inexpensive, yet fully-field deployable.