Cable tracking for autonomous underwater vehicle

This paper describes the technology of cable tracking and experimental results with an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) called AQUA EXPLORER 1000 (AE1000) that is designed to be able to inspect submarine telecommunication cables at the depth of up to 1000 m. The vehicle can detect the magnetic field induced from a cable with on-board magnetometers and calculate the location of the cable. We discuss the errors of the cable location caused by the magnetic noise and misalignment of the sensor axes. We also describe the attitude of the vehicle that is necessary to record the scene of the cable. In the recent sea test, AE1000 succeeded to find out a submarine cable and to track it autonomously. We report the results of the experiment.