Sea trials of MARTIN - a European survey AUV

The untethered unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) MARTIN was launched by Maridan, Denmark in 1995. The design was based on the European AUV MARIUS (1992). MARTIN is being instrumented for oceanographic and industrial surveys including inspection of offshore installations. Sea trials in open water are currently being performed. A new navigation system has been developed for MARTIN. The low-drag flat-fish shaped, modular designed hull has been thoroughly tested in a towing tank and in the open sea. The hydrodynamic parameters were used in computer simulations of the vehicle dynamics. An autopilot based on an adaptive controller takes care of the low level control of rudders and thrusters. The path control including sonar-based obstacle avoidance ensures a smooth trajectory following capability. The mission control is performed with a human operator in the loop. Noise filtering, image analysis and path planning software was developed by the Institute of Automation, Danish Technical University in co-operation with Reson AS and Maridan ApS. The paper includes a description of the navigation system, results from simulations and preliminary results from the first sea trials.