Preliminary Evaluation of Control and Manoeuvring Qualities for the AUTODROP-UUV vehicle

The estimation of control and maneuvering properties for a novel autonomous underwater vehicle designed for the deployment and recovery of subsea sensors is presented. Because of the unusual purpose for such a vehicle, the knowledge of its dynamic properties are of crucial importance and have to be investigated in deep since the preliminary design phases in order to develop both the tracking/control system and to properly set the internal spaces for the payload placement. To this aim, the dynamic behavior has been investigated by means of numerical simulations and captive model test.