ABSTRACT
Worldwide interest in the technical issues surrounding the operation of Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV's) and particularly Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV's) is growing rapidly. At the Naval Postgraduate School, issues surrounding the structure and design of autonomous controllers for these vehicles are being studied, both by computer simulation and by experimental work with small scale systems. One of the areas of concentration, to be addressed in this paper, is that of the combined diving and steering autopilot functions that are necessary for the autonomous navigation of a vehicle through confined spaces.
