• Proceedings of the Korea Committee for Ocean Resources and Engineering Conference
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.34-39
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• 2002

A Semi-Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (SAUV) capable of simple work at sea bed is under development in KRISO-KORDI. A pressure vessel of SAUV which is composed of FRP was manufactured to load electronic equipments. The objective of this paper is to verify the safety of the pressure vessel through conducting the structural analysis and test in pressure tank. Strain and stress under unit load were obtained by using ANSYS in the linear structural analysis. And local buckling analysis was performed with NASTRAN for the middle cylindrical hull. For the pressure test, strains were measured at three point. We found that the results by linear structural analysis and experiment are coincide well at the points where buckling does not occur. Maximum depth was estimated to be 250m by the local buckling analysis.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2003.07c
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• pp.2685-2688
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• 2003

A PC-based system for both monitoring and controlling SAUV is developed. The developed system is located on a ship and communicate with the SAUV through optical link through which the system sends motion command and receives video data, SSBL and Digital I/O data. The motion command includes velocity data and direction data. The overall system is developed with the intention of easy operation for operator and safe motion of SAUV. The easy operation is realized by GUI-based interface and the safe motion is realized by fault tolerant capability.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.80-87
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• 2011

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) present the important advantage of being able to approach the seafloor more closely than surface vessel surveys can. To collect bathymetric data, bottom material information, and sub-surface images, multibeam echosounder, sidescan sonar (SSS) and subbottom profiler (SBP) equipment mounted on an AUV are powerful tools. The 3000m class AUV URASHIMA was developed by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC). After finishing the engineering development and examination phase of a fuel-cell system used for the vehicle's power supply system, a renovated lithium-ion battery power system was installed in URASHIMA. The AUV was redeployed from its prior engineering tasks to scientific use. Various scientific instruments were loaded on the vehicle, and experimental dives for science-oriented missions conducted from 2006. During the experimental cruise of 2007, high-resolution acoustic images were obtained by SSS and SBP on the URASHIMA around the northern Kumano Basin off Japan's Kii Peninsula. The map of backscatter intensity data revealed many debris objects, and SBP images revealed the subsurface structure around the north-eastern end of our study area. These features suggest a structure related to the formation of the latest submarine fan. However, a strong reflection layer exists below ~20 ms below the seafloor in the south-western area, which we interpret as a denudation feature, now covered with younger surface sediments. We continue to improve the vehicle's performance, and expect that many fruitful results will be obtained using URASHIMA.