ABSTRACT
Marine submersibles to-date are manned or remotely operated tethered craft. Many limitations could be overcome with autonomous intelligent craft. Our research endows such craft with failsafe survivability. The control approach uses advanced artificial intelligence, building on a hierarchical approach used by some land based experimental robots. The hierarchy endows the submersible with obstacle avoidance capabilities, destination seeking, navigation, environment exploration, depth and buoyancy control, among others. As a target application the robot is being developed to carry out underwater filming and inspection in the vicinity of fish-farm sea cages and the under side of a ship’s hull.
