Compact AUV platform system designed for the experiment of underwater multi-agent development

The underwater multi-agent technology has many potential for the various activities related to ocean development/conservation in the near future. For example, in such fields as water pollution investigation, aquaculture control, or coral reef research, we feel a growing need for a system that realizes underwater continuous monitoring in the wide rang e. In this case, the target monitoring area will be sliced planar hierarchically toward the depth as monitoring layers, and many AUVs arranged on each layer track the given trajectory and gather various environmental information continuously, with communicating each other in the layer or with other layers. To realize those systems we need to develop AUV multi-agent technologies. So we are now building basic systems for basin experiment for the development of AUV multi-agent behavior. We must experience many situations and problems to be solved for the development of its elemental technologies by using real systems as well as our computer simulations. In this paper we introduce our concept of the experiment in the near future and the hardware/software design of our two types of handy AUVs and ultrasound ranging/communication system for that experiment. One AUV is designed using a 17inches-diameter glass sphere with DOS/V and RT-Linux based subsystems, which is intended to use not only in the basin but also in the calm real sea. The other AUV is designed for the basin experiment using a 7inches-diameter acrylic sphere with low-cost embedded system with SH-2 based subsystems. The basin experiment to verify the basic AUV facilities and ultrasound ranging for position detection was carried out.