Development of a small and modular UROV for enviromental surveying

-Design of the small buoyancy controller using Hydrogen storage alloy-

Abstract

An underwater robot for surveying lakes is being developed by the authors. This underwater robot is required to sample many points over a large area. To travel large distances over long hours, the robot uses wings and controls its buoyancy to glide in the water. In this paper, the development of a lightweight and small hydrogen storage alloy based buoyancy controller for the underwater robot is propose.