Analysis of integrated sensor for unmanned underwater vehicle application

Abstract

This paper presents an integrated sensor system to be applied in underwater vehicles based on 5-DOF Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensor, MPX pressure sensor, and temperature sensor. The main idea of the research is to improve the performance of the integrated sensor system by using the MATLAB/Simulink interfaced with MicroBox 2000/2000C for underwater vehicle applications. An integrated sensor or known as the smart sensor is a small component that designed to gather important data based on underwater applications.  These types of sensors combined and integrated with signal processing hardware in a single compact waterproof device. All sensors are placed in a hard casing made of steel with the dimensions of 0.10 m diameter, 0.85 m height and weight of 0.23 kg. The output of the sensors shows that; the offset error of accelerometer and gyroscopes are within 0.5 to 1.0 and 0.1 to 0.5, respectively. It is shown that the pressure occurs at 0.75s and the reading on voltage increased rapidly until 0.5V and maintained at 0.5V for 1 s. With minimum implementation cost and improved performances of the integrated sensors, this research benefits offshore and underwater industries especially for underwater vehicle.