Design of an autonomous underwater vehicle to evaluate the blazed array sonar and simultaneous localization and mapping algorithms

This thesis has investigated aspects of the design of a new highly maneuverable Autonomous Underwater Vehicle - the XAUV. The overall goal for the design of this vehicle is to create a small, highly maneuverable AUV that can perform autonomous ship hull inspection. Our work towards this goal was targeted to three different aspects: (1) contributions to the conceptual design of the overall vehicle, (2) specification and acquisition of the electronic components of the vehicle, including its main CPU, and (3) mechanical design of selected components, including the ship's hull, servo-controlled fin system, and blazed array sonar nose cone. These contributions have helped to improve and realize the design of the first prototype XAUV, which is expected to be completed in May, 2007, through the work of other members of the design team.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Uhle, Matthew William

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• John J. Leonard.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/40490

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/40490