Welcome to the AUV Homepage

      The AUV program is an ever expanding field of study here in the Ocean Engineering department. Small, low cost, long range vehicles have been developed as sensor platforms for educational, scientific, and military applications.

      Currently, two separate vehicles are under construction/development/refinement: the Ocean Voyager II and the Ocean Explorer series. Several projects directly related to the vehicles themselves are underway here at the F.A.U. Ocean Engineering Department and at the University of South Florida Marine Science Department. Some of these include CHIRP sidescan and sub-bottom sonar, passive imaging sonar, long baseline sonar, acoustic modems, exotic batteries, ocean small-scale turbulence sensors, and various suites of water quality packages.

OCEAN VOYAGER II :

      The Ocean Voyager II was initiated as the child of 23 seniors of the OE dept. in the fall of 1992.It was the senior design project of this class to design a practical AUV to carry a sensor package designed by the University of South Florida (USF) to measure the shallow water coastal environment. This data is then used to ground truth data from satellites currently in orbit. Ocean Voyager II has been operational since January 1994 and is continually upgraded and modified by the staff and students here as tasks dictate. This vehicle has also been used to test CHIRP sidescan and sub-bottom sonars being developed here, as well as LBL navigation techniques. Following operations in the Dry Tortugas off the Florida Keys in August, the vehicle is slated to be turned over to USF for continued operations with their instrument packages.

      The instruments aboard the OVII in the above picture are the Bottom Classification Albedance Package (BCAP), an integrated suite which includes a Xybion multi-spectral downward-looking camera, upwelling and downwelling radiometers, flourometer, transmissometer, and pencil lasers for sizing. More information can be found about this package in USF's page on the BCAP

OCEAN EXPLORER :

      The Ocean Explorer is not just a single AUV but rather the name for the next generation of several vehicles currently being built.This is a new family of AUV's of modular construction, with hull, sensors and software easily convertible for different payloads. The one pictured to the left has been named "COOK". It uses an extensive intelligent distributed control system called LonWorks (Neuron) for communications between numerous sensors and actuators. It is presently undergoing tests in the local waters around F.A.U.

The docking system allows an Ocean Explorer AUV to rendezvous and dock with its base station using fuzzy logic control.

     Note: This is the 3-foot parallel mid-body version, containing approximately 7.5 cubic feet of payload volume. This version is about 10 1/2 feet long. The base vehicle is about 7 1/2 feet in length.Payload interfacing specifications are available.