Design and motion control of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, Amogh

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) are slow-moving small unmanned robots capable of swimming independently below the water surface on pre-defined mission paths and are commonly used for oceanographic exploration, bathymetric surveys and military applications. With the use of appropriate sensors and equipment, AUVs can perform underwater object recognition and obstacle avoidance. Amogh is a miniature AUV developed at Centre For Innovation (CFI), IIT Madras for AUVSI RoboSub competition. The vehicle has a non-conventional dual hull heavy bottom hydrodynamic design equipped with six thrusters which allow for motion control in 4 degrees of freedom. This paper presents various aspects of the unique design of the vehicle. The performance of a simple PID controller for steady depth and heading control has been discussed. Simulations performed on a decoupled mathematical model of the vehicle are compared against experimental results.