Key Technology of Unmanned Underwater Vehicle

Posted by fifishrov on March 20th, 2019

5. Planning and Decision-making

         It refers to the planning and decision-making of the attitude and path of the autonomous underwater UAV working in the current area, which mainly ensures that the UAV heading to the top stream when working.

6. Underwater navigation (positioning) Technology

         There are many kinds of navigation systems for autonomous underwater UAV, such as inertial navigation system, gravity navigation system, seabed terrain navigation system, geomagnetic field navigation system, gravity navigation system, long baseline, short baseline, optical fiber gyroscope and Doppler log, etc. At present, because of the price and technology, it is generally regarded as optical fiber gyroscope and Doppler log. The system can satisfy the requirement of underwater UAV in terms of price, scale and accuracy, and is being developed intensively at home and abroad.

7. Communication Technology

        In order to effectively monitor, transmit data, coordinate and recover, underwater UAV needs communication. At present, the main modes of communication are optical fiber communication and underwater acoustic communication.

        Optical fiber communication consists of optical terminal (water surface), underwater optical terminal and optical cable. Its advantages are high data efficiency (100Mbit/s) and good anti-jamming ability. The disadvantage limits the working distance and maneuverability of the underwater vehicle, which is generally used in TUV and ROV of the underwater robot with cable.

        Underwater acoustic communication is the only and ideal way for underwater robots which need medium and long distance communication because of the slow down of acoustic wave in water. The main obstacle to realize underwater acoustic communication is random multipath interference. To meet the requirements of large-scale and high data rate transmission, many technical difficulties need to be solved. There is still a lot of work to be done to achieve the practical level.

8. Energy System Technology

        Underwater UAVs, especially autonomous underwater UAVs with large endurance, need energy systems with small size, light weight, high energy density, repeated use, safety and low cost.