Development of autonomous underwater vehicle "OCTA" for coastal survey: Introduction of the "OCTA" system and control experiment

Research and development of the ocean, one of the most familiar environments for us, is very important for our future life. Fundamental research to investigate the ocean such as oceanic engineer, biology, chemistry, and geo science should be promoted more and more. As a toll of ocean survey and underwater manipulation, underwater robots have attracted attentions because underwater robots can dive into deep ocean for long period [1, 2,3]. In the point of view about coastal survey, robot system cannot include big system such as support vessels. Therefore, coastal survey AUV needs small system. We have been developing underwater robots and it's technical issues in Nippon Bunri University (NBU) since 2010. AUV “OCTA” is have been developing by NBU Underwater robot team aiming at realization of handy and module. In this paper, we describe the hardware in NBU ‘OCTA’ system, and also, describe the software design structure and control experiment.