Graduate students at the University of Florida are in the process of
modifying and testing an autonomous submarine, SubjuGator, to compete
in the 2001 ONR/AUVSI Underwater Vehicle Competition. SubjuGator is
designed for operation down to 100 feet, and can be quickly configured
to optimize for mobility or speed. SubjuGator's body has mounts to
support up to ten motors, each of which may be oriented in any
direction in its plane. SubjuGator is controlled through a
single-board 586 computer running the Linux operating system, which is
interfaced to the motors and sensors through two other processors, a
DSP and a microcontroller. On-board sensors include a digital compass,
a fluidic inclinometer, sonar altimeter, inertial measurement unit,
and a pressure sensor. Additionally, mission specific sensors include
a hydrophone array for acoustic ping detection and localization and a
CdS array for visual strobe detection and localization. In this paper,
we first describe the mechanical makeup of SubjuGator. Next, we
describe the electronic and processing hardware, and the motivation
for our electronic design. We then discuss the various on-board
sensors, both mission-dependent as well as missionindependent.
Finally, we comment on vehicle control strategies.
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