Navigation of the AUV for investigation of underwater structures

There is a great demand for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV's) to investigate artificial underwater structures such as piles and caissons in harbors, and risers and jackets of deep-sea oilfields. This paper proposes the autonomous investigation method of underwater structures by AUV's that is implemented by initially detecting the target objects, localizing them, and then approaching them by taking video images while closely tracing the shape of the target objects. A simple laser ranging system and a navigation method based on the relative position to the target objects are introduced to realize this behavior. Copyright (C) 2003 IFAC.