Pacific Nautilus

Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

2009 Journal Paper

DeltA (AKA Fat Man)

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Members of Pacific Nautilus
 Pacific Nautilus
Christopher-Lorenzo Carter, Steven Keeton, Colin Bradbury, Yama Khuu,
Mark Halls, Kyle Kurch, Aaron Werner, Michael George

in conjunction with:

National Society of Black Engineers-SDCC

Mesa Robotics Organization

http://www.pacificnautilus.org

Abstract atmospheres. Within the custom hull of the

Since 2005 community college students from
the San Diego Community College District
have come together to in the spirit of hard
work, experience and dedication. This work
ethic makes up the majority of community
college students who transfer to four year
institutions to complete their degree. Our
members and their organizations come together
to solve real-world engineering problems by
using real life experience, which they apply in
addition to college education, to produce
solutions. The majority of the students are from
Electrical, Mechanical, Aerospace, Civil,
Structural, Bio or Computer Engineering with
some from Math and Business disciplines.
Students from the first community college to
enter this competition have regrouped under
Pacific Nautilus and added member
organizations in order to recreate this effort at
additional community colleges and universities
to share the knowledge, experience and training
we have acquired. Pacific Nautilus is now in its
fourth year as an organization and its third
entry into the AUVSI and ONR’s Annual
Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition.
Pacific Nautilus’ DeltA Fat Man is designed to
operate autonomously in depths of up to 2
vehicle, a series of microchip microcontrollers
analyze data from cameras, hydrophones,
gyroscope and absolute pressure sensor and as
well as output to custom motor controllers to
propel the vehicle through the obstacle course.
1. Introduction
The Autonomous Unmanned Vehicle
Systems International (AUVSI) and the
Office of Naval Research (ONR) are
sponsoring the twelfth annual international
autonomous underwater vehicle competition
to be held in San Diego, California at the
SPAWAR facility July 28th through August
2nd. A student team, under Pacific Nautilus,
made up of the National Society of Black
Engineers – SDCC (NSBE-SDCC) and the
Mesa Robotics Organization (MRO) will be
developing a new Autonomous Underwater
Vehicle (AUV) to enter this year’s
competition. NSBE-SDCC and MRO have
engaged in research that strays away from its
contemporaries and has engaged in a cutting
edge multiuse platform. The control system
developed will be able to control ground and
surface water vehicle in future
implementations of these vehicles.

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2. Mechanical Platform
Hull Design
Utilizing Pro/Engineer Wildfire 4.0, precision
parts are designed and manufactured in a 3D
environment to reduce prototyping time and
virtually eliminate human error. Originally
modeling of the models was done by creating
a single solid part, but this was later
determined to be extremely inefficient due to
the guesswork involved when fabricating the
vehicle. It was later established that modeling
each individual part of the vehicle and then
3D View
discovered that the reduced internal volume
was insufficient for the range of components
required. By merging the previous designs,
full advantage is taken of both the stability of
the original Model A and the reduced drag of
the Model A Delta.
Thrusters
Three Seabotix SBT 150 thrusters power the
DeltA, which are mounted directly to the hull.
Two are mounted horizontally to provide
forward thrust, while the third is mounted
vertically in the front to provide vertical
thrust. Each thruster provides 4.85 lbs-ft at
4.25 amps and 19 VDC, with a peak thrust of
6.4 lb-ft by increasing current for short
periods.

assembling them within the Pro/Engineer

environment was the most efficient process.
Beginning with a basic box shaped design, Seabotix SBT 150 Thruster
named the Model A, in order to take full
advantage of laminar flow, the prototype Our Seabotix thrusters come with Subcon
proved effective in maintaining a steady four pin male connectors which we matted
course by traveling within a single plane of with a four pin female wet mattable
water. This proved essential in the connector.
development of the next stage of the design,
referred to as the Model A Delta (Delta). By
studying the designs of current Avionics
platforms such as the Concord and the F-22
Raptor and adopting the delta wing model,
the latest prototype achieved reduced
resistance while maintaining its stability.
Throughout the prototyping process it was Wet/Dry Connectors
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The outer box uses three water-proof cable Appendix page for Power distribution Chart.)
glands with through hole
bushings in each, one three
hole bushing for thruster
control, and the other two are
4 hole bushings for the three
hydrophones, 2 lights, 2 cameras and pressure
transducer. The inner box has one Seacon All-
Wet connect with 24 pin outs in a pie shaped
configuration with six connecters having 4
pin out each

The fourth battery is utilized to power the

controller boards.

Each battery has a PCB installed with the

3. Electronic Hardware
Batteries
The AUV is powered by four 11.1 V Lithium
Ion 4400 mAH batteries that provide 48.8 Wh
at 4A with a maximum of 12.6 V peak and a
cutoff Voltage of 7.5 V. Three 11.1 V
batteries are used in parallel to offer 11.1
Volts at 13.2 Amps to power the three
Seabotix SBT 150 Thrusters. (See Figure 1 in
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battery pack and protects the battery from:
• Overcharge (>12.6V)
• Over discharge( <7.5 V)
• Over drain ( >10 Amp)
• Short circuits
• Max discharging rate of 4A
The four batteries are enclosed in a water-
proof/fire retardant ABS enclosure with
silicon sealing wire.
The Seabotix thrusters, when running at 19
Volts and max current of 4 amps, use about
80 watts of power. The thrusters will be
running at 11.1 Volts. The thrusters draw 3.75
Amps of current therefore we will use 41.6
watts of power. The H-bridge will be supplied
with 11.1 Volts and 13.2 Amps, thus
supplying the thrusters with about 146.5
Watts of power. The minimum voltage before
cut off is 7.5 Volts therefore we can run the
vehicle for about 3 hours if we completely
drain the batteries to their cutoff voltage.
The standard charging time is 4 hours per
battery. We have two smart chargers in which
to charge the batteries, and therefore need to
plan for up to an 8 hours down time in which
we would have no batteries for our vehicle.
Since LiPo batteries have no memory affect
we could theoretically charge them during
any break in test runs and between qualifying
runs towards the end of the week.
Microcontroller
The custom motion controller circuit board
takes in analog data from a pressure
transducer, a two-axis tilt sensor, and a yaw-
rate sensor. Based on this information, it
generates PWM output signals to control up
to four bidirectional motors. The selected
microcontroller to perform this task is the
Microchip PIC18F2525. The operations are
controlled by commands received over a
UART serial interface. The circuit board also
has an SPI interface for controlling additional
thrusters.
Custom Controller Board
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Motor Control/H-Bridge
The H-bridge circuit board contains three H-
bridge circuits derived from the Open Source
Motor Controller (OSMC). It accepts the
differential PWM outputs from the motion
controller board and generates the appropriate
power for the three Seabotix SBT 150
thrusters. Each H-bridge circuit can deliver
up to 10 amps at 24 volts, whereas the current
vehicle only requires up to 4 amps at 12 volts.
The use of differential PWM signals
eliminates the need for a common ground link
between the circuit boards, thereby allowing
each circuit board to run on its own
independent power subsystem.
Custom H-Bridge Board
Hydrophone array controller
The custom acoustics board takes in analog
data from three hydrophones and determines
the relative direction to the pinger. The
selected microcontrollers for this task are
three dpPIC33FJ12 digital signals processors
(DSPs) and a central general-purpose
PIC18F26K20 microcontroller. Each DSP
takes the input signal from one hydrophone,
performs a 4-pole Chebyshev band-pass filter
and then examines the result for the presence
of an acoustic signal of the designated
frequency; the timing parameters of the
acoustic signal are then communicated to the
central microcontroller via an I2C interface.
The central microcontroller generates a
common sampling trigger signal so that the
DSPs are all synchronous with each other.
The central microcontroller is responsible for
the mathematics for determining the pinger
direction; this information is then passed
upward to the mission-control algorithms
which are currently co-located in the central
microcontroller.
Hydrophones
We are using custom built hydrophones
provided by LAB-Core Systems. The
hydrophones are mounted to wings below the
hull arranged in an equilateral triangle. The
hydrophone outputs are fed into a custom
built circuit board housing three
dpPIC33FJ12 digital signals processors
(DSPs) and. The signals are then sampled
through a central general-purpose
PIC18F26K20 microcontroller.
Additionally, Dr. Bradbury developed a
program to mathematically simulate the
signal detection and bearing calculation task.
The Hydrophones Model Program was used
to determine the most efficient configuration
for the hydrophone array and to investigate
various bearing analysis algorithms.
4. Software and controls
The control system uses a Pic18F2525
Microcontroller to read data from the analog
absolute pressure sensor in order to obtain our
depth, a dual axis accelerometer to determine
our tilt angle, a gyroscope to determine our
yaw rate and to generate 3 PWM signals to
control our left, right and center thrusters. We
are using C to program our control micro
controller using Microchip’s MPlabs IDE.
Our motion control software is broken down
into 7 files. These file separate common
algorithms to simplify debugging, controller
changes, sensor changes and code
modification.

LAB-Core Systems Custom Hydrophone

In the course of developing the Pacific

Nautilus AUV’s we have published a number
of white papers to document the development
of the hydrophone system. The Hydrophones
Mathematical Model, Hydrophone Sampling
and Pyramid Search paper was developed in
cooperation with Pacific Nautilus by Dr.
Colin Bradbury who is a respected member of
our team and a trusted adviser.

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Members of Pacific Nautilus
 5. Vehicle Testing
Hull Prototyping
After a group consensus to use acrylic
for our hull design we made a steady effort to
begin experimenting with scrap pieces. Our
first project was to simply bond two ¼ inch
acrylic sheets together edge to face with #16
clear, medium bodied solvent cement acrylic
welding material. After becoming
comfortable with the welding process we set
a goal to create a water proof ½ scale
prototype of the original model A. We were
not too successful in our first fabrication and
found it difficult to properly seal our longer
pieces. After a bit of researching and
professional consultation we found the
welding process was made more easy and
effective when the edges were precisely cut
and polished. Taking a step back we
fabricated a small box with a removable
sealable lid for proof of concept. To finish
and ensure an even bond we used a diluted
welding solvent #3 with a hypodermic needle
to fill voids in the original weld. We were
beginning to find success in our welding
capabilities yet were now finding leaks
around our fastener sites. We moved to use
½ inch aluminum hardware to mount our lid
with extra gaskets around the bolt heads and
between the thread site and lid surface. This
proved effective and we are now fully
confident in our water tight system. We then
built a second prototype of the original
"model A" and another of the delta wing
design. These two prototypes led us to
"DeltA," "A.K.A. Fat Man" and now have
two hulls in production.
Waterproofing
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Our method for waterproofing is a simple
gasket and flange plate design that allows us
to access our power site, controller boards,
and other parts. All of our exterior
component wiring will be fed bulkhead
connectors with rubber bushings and finally
spliced into a waterproof bulkhead connector
that is fitted to our interior power and
controller box.
6. Conclusion
The entry of the Fat Man is the culmination
of four years of thought and effort from team
members past and present. This idea in one
form or another has been discussed and
planned by some very bright and talented
students since our inception. We are very
proud of our first custom fabricated hull,
motor controller board, H-bridge and
hydrophone DSP. Community college
students bring life experience as well as
curious minds which makes our entry into
this competition very interesting.
7. Acknowledgments
Corporate Sponsors
We would like to thank our corporate
sponsors who have not only empowered us
reach new heights, but filled us with greater
confidence that we are headed in the right
direction with our research and that the
advances we are making in some of our
technology can lead to greater understanding
and impact in the field of autonomous
vehicles. Both Jerry Gruen & Darci Bushy
from Lockheed Martin have been a great
source of support and encouragement. Don
Rodecker from Seabotix, who we consider a
friend and mentor in the field of
AUV/ROV’s, has supported us from the
beginning of our project. Brock Rosenthal Side View
from Ocean Innovations and Ronald Perez
San Diego Seal are new sponsors for Pacific
Nautilus and we look forward to
collaboration with them in the future. Seacon
and Microchip have supplied us with needed
resources to complete our project.

Advisers and mentors

The following advisors have not only been an
inspiration, but have made our learning and This is the outer hull through which we slide
research fun and rich in depth and breath. the inner control box. This acrylic hull design
Thanks: Dr. Colin Bradbury, Dr. Michael gives the vehicle stability and has increase
George, Professor Duane Wesly, Professor laminar flow which eliminates two degrees of
Morteza Mohssenzadeh with out whom we freedom allows for simpler single plane
would not made such significant progress. control.
Through SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise)
Dr. Leroy Brady has handled our accounting
and accountability to our sponsors. This will Inner Box
allow us to account to our sponsors our
expenditures fully. Thanks to San Diego
Mesa College who has supported this project
with open arms.

8. Appendix

DeltA (aka Fat Man)

Top View

The inner box is the crux of our new design.

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Members of Pacific Nautilus
This inner box contains the batteries, motion
control system, temperature sensor, dual axis
accelerometer, link to our absolute pressure
transducer, custom acoustics board and some
room for additional sensors as needed. We
will be able to move this control box to our
surface water or ground vehicle, reprogram
the micro controllers and control
multiplatform vehicles with a single control
system.
-8-
This single source multiplatform approach
Outer hull
will replace the current methodology
currently employed by our military and
civilian agencies that use remote operated or
autonomous vehicles.

Exploded View

Removable Control box

This exploded view shows the complexity

and sophistication of our first custom
designed hull. This concept has great
potential and takes advantage of low cost
custom fabrication to offer a high
performance cost effective platform that
meets customer needs.

This box will be used in other autonomous

vehicles allowing us to have a single control
system for multiple platforms.

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Members of Pacific Nautilus
 Power Distribution Diagram

Figure 1. This power distribution system incorporates the elements that are currently
implemented with the additional potential to be expanded for future growth.

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Members of Pacific Nautilus