Development and Tank Test of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle 'ISiMI'

摘要

Maritime and Ocean Engineering Research Institute (MOERI), a branch of KORDI, has designed and manufactured a model of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) named ISiMI (Integrated Submergible for Intelligent Mission Implementation). ISiMI is an AUV platform to satisfy the various needs of experimental test required for development of challenging technologies newly investigated in the field of underwater robot; control and navigational algorithms and software architectures. The main design goal of ISiMI AUV is downsizing which will reduce substantially the operating cost compared to other vehicles previously developed in KORDI such as VORAM or DUSAUV. As a result of design and manufacturing process, ISiMI is implemented to be 1.2 m in length, 0.17 m in diameter and weigh 20 kg in air. A series of tank test is conducted to verify the basic functions of ISiMI in the Ocean Engineering Basin of MOERI, which includes manual control with R/F link, auto depth, auto heading control and a final approach control for underwater docking. This paper describes the implementation of ISiMI system and the experimental results to verify the function of ISiMI as a test-bed AUV platform.