Design and Control of a Six-degree of Freedom Autonomous Underwater Robot 'CHALAWAN'

Water covers two-thirds of the earth and has a great influence on the future existence of all human being. Thailand has extensive coastline and near shore water that contain vast biological and mineralogical resources. The rivers and canals can be found around the country especially in the Bangkok, which once called the Venice of the East. Autonomous underwater robot (AUR) will be soon a tool to help us better understand water resources and other environmental issues. This paper presents the design and basic control of a six-degree of freedom AUR "Chalawan", which was constructed to be used as a testbed for shallow. It is a simple low cost open-frame design, which can be modified easily to supports various research areas in the underwater environment. It was tested with a conventional proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller. After fine-tuning of the controller gains, the results showed the controller's good performances. In the future, the dynamic model of the robot will be analyzed and identified. The advanced control algorithm will be implemented based on the obtained model.