Sea-Whale 2000: A Long-range Hybrid Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for Ocean Observation

This paper mainly introduces Sea-Whale 2000 -- a class of long-range hybrid autonomous underwater vehicles, which is newly developed by Shenyang Institute of Automation, CAS. Sea-Whale 2000 is designed to dive to 2000 meters underwater for ocean survey and has a 1500 kilometers work-range at a speed of 0.5m/s, supporting an average payload power of 7 watts. Concentrating on ocean observations, this type of vehicles can run a long-endurance mission for weeks by launching once, and they can accomplish multiple working mode missions, combining horizontal observation at a certain depth and vertical observation like gliders. The pitch control algorithm is mainly introduced, considering it contributes to both of the two characteristics above. Finally, a series of lake experiment results with a prototype are shown to prove the fundamental performances of Sea-Whale 2000 long range AUV.