Experimentally based analysis of low altitude terrain following by autonomous underwater vehicles

Operating a flight style autonomous underwater vehicle in close proximity to a terrain is very often completely reliant on the vehicle sensors for terrain detection. This challenges the manoeuvrability of such vehicles, which are also required to be energy efficient. In this chapter, recent experimentally based results on the performance of such vehicles are given. These results use the fully understood environment of a lake and are for the critical tasks of repeatability, obstacle detection and the actuation strategy used.