• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.65-72
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• 2013

This paper describes a finite element analysis (FEA) of the body frame of a subsea robot, Crabster200 (CR200). CR200 has six legs for mobility instead of screw type propellers, which distinguishes it from previous underwater robots such as remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Another distinguishing characteristic is the body frame, which is made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP). This body frame is designed as a rib cage structure in order to disperse the applied external loads and reduce the weight. The frame should be strong enough to support many devices for exploration and operation underwater. For a reasonable FEA, we carried out specimen tests. Using the obtained material properties, we performed a modal analysis and FEA for CR200 with a ready posture. Finally, this paper presents the FEA results for the CFRP body frame and the compares the characteristics of CFRP with conventional material, aluminum.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.374-380
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• 2016

The large drift and angle of attack motion of an ROV (Remotely operated vehicle) cannot be modeled using the typical hydrodynamic coefficients of conventional straight running AUVs and specific slender bodies. In this paper, the ROV hull is divided into several simple-shaped components to model the hydrodynamic force and moment. The hydrodynamic force and moment acting on each component are modeled as the components of added mass force and drag using the known values for simple shapes such as a cylinder and flat plate. Since an ROV is operated under the water, the only environmental force considered is the current effect. The target ROV dealt with in this paper has six thrusters, and it is assumed that its maneuvering motion is determined using a thrust allocation algorithm. Tracking simulations are carried out on the ship’s surface near the stern, bow, and midship sections based on the modeling of the hydrodynamic force and current effect.

• Journal of Ship and Ocean Technology
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.23-34
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• 2005

Increased usage of AUVs has led to the development of alternative navigational methods that use the acoustic beacons and dead reckoning. This paper describes a concurrent mapping and localization (CML) scheme that uses range sonars mounted on SNUUV­I, which is a small test AUV developed by Seoul National University. The CML is one of such alternative navigation methods for measuring the environment that the vehicle is passing through. In addition, it is intended to provide relative position of AUV by processing the data from sonar measurements. A technique for CML algorithm which uses several ranging sonars is presented. This technique utilizes an extended Kalman filter to estimate the location of the AUV. In order for the algorithm to work efficiently, the nearest neighbor standard filter is introduced as the algorithm of data association in the CML for associating the stored targets the sonar returns at each time step. The proposed CML algorithm is tested by simulations under various conditions. Experiments in a towing tank for one dimensional navigation are conducted and the results are presented. The results of the simulation and experiment show that the proposed CML algorithm is capable of estimating the position of the vehicle and the object and demonstrates that the algorithm will perform well in the real environment.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.44-56
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• 2012

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) provide a useful means of collecting detailed oceano-graphic information. The hull resistance of an AUV is an important factor in determining the power requirements and range of the vehicle. This paper describes a procedure using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for determining the hull resistance of an AUV under development, for a given propeller rotation speed and within a given range of AUV velocities. The CFD analysis results reveal the distribution of the hydrodynamic values (velocity, pressure, etc.) around the AUV hull and its ducted propeller. The paper then proceeds to present a methodology for optimizing the AUV profile in order to reduce the total resistance. This paper demonstrates that shape optimization of conceptual designs is possible using the commercial CFD package contained in Ansys$^{TM}$. The optimum design to minimize the drag force of the AUV was identified for a given object function and a set of constrained design parameters.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2020

This paper investigates the influence of the Circulating Water Channel (CWC) side wall and support struts on the hydrodynamic coefficient prediction for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) experiments. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method has been used to model the CWC tests. The hydrodynamic coefficients estimated by CFD are compared with the prediction of experiments to verify the accuracy of simulations. In order to study the effect of side wall on the hydrodynamic characteristics of the AUV in full scale captive model tests, this paper uses the CWC non-dimensional width parameters to quantify the correlation between the CWC width and hydrodynamic coefficients of the chosen model. The result shows that the hydrodynamic coefficients tend to be constant with the CWC width parameters increasing. Moreover, the side wall has a greater effect than the struts.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.441-450
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• 2022

The introduction of autonomous underwater gliders (AUGs) specifically addresses the reduction of operational costs that were previously prohibited with conventional autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) using a "scaling-down" design philosophy by utilizing the characteristics of autonomous drifters to far extend operation duration and coverage. Long-duration, wide-area missions raise the cost and complexity of in-water testing for novel approaches to autonomous mission planning. As a result, a simulator that supports the rapid design, development, and testing of autonomy solutions across a wide range using software-in-the-loop simulation at faster-than-real-time speeds becomes critical. This paper describes a faster-than-real-time AUG simulator that can support high-resolution bathymetry for a wide variety of ocean environments, including ocean currents, various sensors, and vehicle dynamics. On top of the de facto standard ROS-Gazebo framework and open-sourced underwater vehicle simulation packages, features specific to AUGs for ocean mapping are developed. For vehicle dynamics, the next-generation hybrid autonomous underwater gliders (Hybrid-AUGs) operate with both the buoyancy engine and the thrusters to improve navigation for bathymetry mappings, e.g., line trajectory, are is implemented since because it can also describe conventional AUGs without the thrusters. The simulation results are validated with experiments while operating at 120 times faster than the real-time.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.19 no.8
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• pp.667-675
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• 2013

This paper presents vision-based techniques for underwater landmark detection, map-based localization, and SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) in structured underwater environments. A variety of underwater tasks require an underwater robot to be able to successfully perform autonomous navigation, but the available sensors for accurate localization are limited. A vision sensor among the available sensors is very useful for performing short range tasks, in spite of harsh underwater conditions including low visibility, noise, and large areas of featureless topography. To overcome these problems and to a utilize vision sensor for underwater localization, we propose a novel vision-based object detection technique to be applied to MCL (Monte Carlo Localization) and EKF (Extended Kalman Filter)-based SLAM algorithms. In the image processing step, a weighted correlation coefficient-based template matching and color-based image segmentation method are proposed to improve the conventional approach. In the localization step, in order to apply the landmark detection results to MCL and EKF-SLAM, dead-reckoning information and landmark detection results are used for prediction and update phases, respectively. The performance of the proposed technique is evaluated by experiments with an underwater robot platform in an indoor water tank and the results are discussed.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.65 no.11
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• pp.1868-1878
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• 2016

This paper proposes a novel velocity estimator for long-term underwater navigation of autonomous underwater vehicles(AUVs). Provided that an external position fix is not given, a viable goal in designing a underwater navigation algorithm is to reduce the divergence rate of position error only using the sporadic velocity information obtained from Doppler velocity log(DVL). For such case, the performance of underwater navigation eventually depends on accuracy and reliability of external velocity information. This motivates us to devise a velocity estimator which can drastically enhance the navigation performance even when the DVL measurement is unavailable. Incorporating the Gertler-Hagen hydrodynamics model of an AUV with the measurement models of velocity and depth sensors, the velocity estimator design problem is resolved using the extended Kalman filter. Different from the existing methods in which an AUV simulator is regarded as a virtual sensor, our approach is less sensitive to the model uncertainty often encountered in practice. This is because our velocity filter estimates the simulator errors with sensor aids and furthermore compensates these errors based on the indirect feedforward manner. Through the simulations for typical AUV navigation scenarios, the effectiveness of the proposed scheme is demonstrated.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.177-184
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• 2021

This paper proposes an assessment method using probability-based index for safe and successful underwater docking of autonomous underwater vehicles(AUVs) to the docking stations(DSs). The proposed method assesses the probability of docking according to the degree to which the state of the AUV is consistent with the state criteria for docking. The assessment is performed within a specific area considering the kinematic constraints and docking plans of the AUV. The assessment process is defining probability density function, calculating probabilities for reaching the docking station according to the difference to position and heading criteria, and computing the probability-based index in real-time. We verify the validity of the proposed method through analyzing the data acquired on operation test.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.340-352
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• 2022

This article presents a modeling method for the uncorrelated measurement error of the ultra-short baseline (USBL) acoustic positioning system for aiding navigation of underwater vehicles. The Mahalanobis distance (MD) and principal component analysis are applied to decorrelate the errors of USBL measurements, which are correlated in the x- and y-directions and vary according to the relative direction and distance between a reference station and the underwater vehicles. The proposed method can decouple the radial-direction error and angular direction error from each USBL measurement, where the former and latter are independent and dependent, respectively, of the distance between the reference station and the vehicle. With the decorrelation of the USBL errors along the trajectory of the vehicles in every time step, the proposed method can reduce the threshold of the outlier decision level. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, simulation studies were performed with motion data obtained from a field experiment involving an autonomous underwater vehicle and USBL signals generated numerically by matching the specifications of a specific USBL with the data of a global positioning system. The simulations indicated that the navigation system is more robust in rejecting outliers of the USBL measurements than conventional ones. In addition, it was shown that the erroneous estimation of the navigation system after a long USBL blackout can converge to the true states using the MD of the USBL measurements. The navigation systems using the uncorrelated error model of the USBL, therefore, can effectively eliminate USBL outliers without loss of uncontaminated signals.