Experimental results of an autonomous underwater vehicle "Urashima"

Japan Marine Science and Technology Center (JAMSTEC) has advanced the development of an ocean going Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). Technical problem on an AUV is to develop instruments for digital telemetry, highly accurate positioning in the sea and an efficient power source. The AUV in JAMSTEC has digital telemetry, accurate positioning system and high energy density battery. Sea test started in 2000, results were fed back to instruments to improve AUV performances. The quality of the communication has improved by the noise reduction. The positional error of the AUV was evaluated with a track given by an acoustic positioning system and DGPS on board a support vessel. The examination was planned and expanded based on previous results step by step. As the result, the AUV cruised more than 130km along the pre-programmed route while having submerged. This paper summarized the result of the sea area examination executed from 2000 to 2002.