Model experiment of a launcher of a Deep-Sea Monitoring Robot System

National Maritime Research Institute (NMRI), in cooperation with Underwater Technology Research Center, Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo, is developing a Compact Deep-Sea Monitoring Robot System for investigation of sunken ships in deep sea. This system is consisted of a launcher and a small vehicle, and it has characteristics of both AUV and ROV. A launcher corresponds with its mother ship by using optical fiber cable. There is no umbilical cable between a launcher and a vehicle, and the communication is performed by acoustic communication. A launcher submerges holding a vehicle by gravity. It controls its rudders for approaching to a target point. Just before reach the sea bottom, a launcher releases an anchor, launches a vehicle to start mission. In order to pursue the best configuration for effective horizontal movement during descending motion, preliminary calculation and experiments were carried out for two types of configurations, a fuselage with fins and rudders and a fuselage with rudders but no fins. This paper describes the results of calculation and experiments at a deep-sea model basin. The basic mechanism of descend were confirmed.