MONSUN: a swarmAUV for environmental monitoring and inspection

Abstract

This chapter presents the development of the small swarm -capable autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) MONSUN and its use for environmental monitoring and inspection tasks. A summarizing description of robot development in hardware and software is given, whereby efforts of the design process are explained in detail. After the focus on underwater communication techniques, swarm behaviours based on robust and scaleable localization principles are presented. Finally, the flexibility and functionality of the system are shown with the help of various experiments and field tests.