Micro AUV system
Objectives
ROV-T class: the transmitter and receiver pairs are infact a wired tether. A human controller controls the vehicle. There is no need for the controller or sensor sub-systems in the Underwater Vehicle. The vehicle essentially consists of the propulsion system only.
ROV-RC class: a human controller controls the vehicle through radio control. There is no need for the sensor sub-system in this class. A controller sub-system is needed to intercept the radio commands and pass to the propulsion subsystem.
AUV class: an external computer is where the main control program resides. It is thus a distributed autonomous system. The vehicle unit needs only a low complexity MCU (microcontroller) to receive and transmit commands as well as sensor inputs, to the main host controller. This model for the AUV category makes it autonomous, yet simpler to construct than a system where the autonomous controller also has to reside in the vehicle itself.
Thus the "AUV" vehicle unit in reality needs to be just an "ROV" and consists of battery, thrusters, hydrophones/radio, MCU for intercepting commands and actuating thrusters and some other sensors (optical etc). The communication to and from the host controller to the ROV can be through acoustics or radio (see section on Ideas). It is an AUV in the sense that user interaction is not allowed during the competition.
However, if participants are able to incorporate the functionality of the Host controller into the small size of the Underwater vehicle, they are welcome to do so.
More details are described in this page