Equipping of a Hovering Type Autonomous Underwater Vehicle with Ballast Tanks and its effect on Degrees of Freedom

Currently, hovering type autonomous underwater vehicles (HAUV’s) are very noteworthy, due to theirs unique capabilities and features. Appropriate maneuverability and controllability is the most important feature for a HAUV that, make it better than other AUV’s. In order to increase stability and controllability of robot, the ballast tank is applied for a HAUV. Using of ballast tank in HAUV was not common before. In this paper a new underwater vehicle is presented, including three ballast tanks and three thrusters. In this underwater vehicle, the number of thrusters is less than original robot. In this paper, dynamics modeling and tracking control of this new underwater vehicle is investigated. The results show that the heave and pitch DOF’s can be reachable by using of the ballast tanks and we don’t need to use extra thrusters for these degrees of freedoms.