Design and testing of a Self-Mooring AUV

The Virginia Tech Self-Mooring AUV is capable of mooring itself on the seafloor. Its principal mission is to deploy bottom-mounted sensors without the need for a support ship to visit the mooring location. The mooring concept was previously demonstrated using a small-scale prototype. It has, more recently, been transitioned to a full-scale system and successfully demonstrated in the field. In this paper, we document the design of the full-scale vehicle and present results from field trials.