Abstract
JAMSTEC is now keeping a watchful eye on some global issues such as the seabed resources and energy, global warming, ocean earthquake and Tsunami. They are serious problems to us and will cause the greater damage to us in near future. In addition, they are intimately tied to the seabed condition and the seabed behavior. In order to work on these problems, effective tools to investigate the seabed and understand them should be prepared. So JAMSTEC is now developing various types of underwater vehicles for them. And also, various kinds of systems to apply to the underwater vehicles have been developing. Some of them are navigation systems, control systems and observation systems. They are important and essential technologies which defines the cruising performance and the observation performance. Especially, visualization systems are absolutely necessary as observation systems in order to understand the seabed environment. They are loaded onto the underwater vehicles which close to the seabed and cruise keeping a constant altitude according to their each characteristics and specifications. In fact, it could be argued that they dictate the cruise planning and the motion control of the underwater vehicle. This paper describes about the seabed investigation applying underwater vehicles including some fundamental technologies which are relevant to are relevant to are relevant to the seabed visualization.
