Design and testing of a modular Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

MARTA (MARine Tool for Archaeology) is a modular AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) designed and developed by the University of Florence in the framework of the ARROWS (ARchaeological RObot systems for the World’s Seas) European project. The ARROWS project challenge is to provide the underwater archaeologists with technological tools for cost affordable campaigns: i.e. ARROWS adapts and develops low cost AUV technologies to significantly reduce the cost of archaeological operations, covering the full extent of an archaeological campaign (underwater mapping, diagnosis and cleaning tasks). MARTA is one of the new AUVs developed during the project. It is composed of several modules, each one dedicated to a particular task: thus the vehicle can be easily customized according to the underwater archaeological mission profile to perform. MARTA AUV has a total length of about 3.5 m (depending on its configuration), an external diameter of 7 inches and an in-air weight of about 80 kg. The main vehicle characteristics are: a reachable depth of 150 m, a maximum longitudinal speed of 4 knots, an autonomy of about 4 hours and hovering capability (5 degrees of freedom - not roll - actively controllable). Many modules and on-board sensors (both navigation and payload ones) have been already successfully tested and validated. The first sea trials of the vehicle are scheduled for Spring 2015.