Optimizing the Power Budget of Hovering AUVs

Abstract

The maximum mission duration and range of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle are governed by the amount of energy carried on board and the way it is spent during the mission. While an increase in battery capacity and a decrease in electronics demand yield a direct increase in vehicle range, the impact of velocity variation is not so obvious. With slower velocities, most of the energy will be spent in electronics, not in motion, while for faster velocities a lot of energy will be needed to balance drag. Flying-type AUVs have a minimum velocity for the control surfaces to be effective, reducing the range of values for optimization. Hovering type AUVs, on the other hand, are typically slower moving platforms, able to travel at arbitrarily slow velocities. This paper addresses the analysis of the power consumption of hovering type AUVs, providing guidelines and analytical expressions to compute the optimal velocity when the vehicle travels in a single direction, and also when the trajectory is a combination of horizontal and vertical motion. © 2019 IEEE.