Autonomous vehicles and systems
We have designed and deployed a wide variety of vehicles, including those that go very deep, go very fast, anchor themselves on the seafloor, and others that operate in teams.
A few recent examples of systems that have been developed at the Center
VT 690 AUV
The VT690 is a workhorse in the Center and supports a large variety of research objectives. It displaces about 43kg (95 lbs) and operates at up 500m depth. It's endurance is 22 hours with everything running, including a bathymetric sonar. It communicates using an acoustic modem, Iridium satcom, a 900 MHz radio, and WiFi. It navigates using a DVL-aided INS with one-way-travel-time ranging and a custom navigation algorithm.
Three VT690 AUVs
Dragon AUV
The Dragon AUV can tow a payload whose drag is many times larger than that of the AUV. The Dragon presents a number of design challenges. For example, the highly-loaded propulsion system must provide many times more thrust than needed for the AUV alone, but without cavitation or excessive roll-moment. Likewise, the control system requires unconventional control affectors for maneuving due to the large restoring moment imparted by the towed payload.
Dragon AUV
DIVE LDUUV
The DIVE LDUUV was developed in collaboration with Dive Technologies (now Anduril). Virginia Tech students and faculty designed the geometery of the body and control surfaces, autopilot, guidance, and autonomy algorthms, generated a high-fidelity dynamic model, and provided, the graphical user-interface and almost all of the software. More info is here.
LDUUV
