Anybody have any experience with these, either small recreational models/toys, scientific research vehicles, or military drones? How deep can they dive? Top speed? Range? What means are used for navigation? Are real-time communications and remote control possible? What did you accomplish with them?
Just curious about an alternative to the more typical R/C aeroplanes, helicopters, cars, and boats.
Aren’t those just normal submarines? If drug cartels are constructing homemade uncrewed narco-subs that would be an impressive example of what I had in mind, but the article mentions no such thing.
I expected there would be some scientific or military use of untethered ROVs, but perhaps there is some reason why they are not practical?
Interesting subject.
Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) have many uses and have been around a long time but they have serious limitations.
Amateurs do get involved, but it looks like the kind of hobby that could become quite expensive.
https://store.openrov.com/collections/openrov
Unless there is a cable, communication will be difficult. There are such things as underwater modems, that can send data by encoding it into acoustic signals, but the data rates are very low indeed and the range is quite limited and there is a danger it might deafen the wild life. They are also big and expensive. Tracking is also a problem, it can be done over a short range, using the same acoustic modem from the surface, but there is no equivalent of GPS that works underwater.
A data cable is the only way to get realtime video so you can drive the thing, and to be useful the water has to be clear and, of course the range is limited by the length and weight of the tether.
AUVs can, however, float about logging data for long periods of time, periodically surfacing and sending data by satellite modem. There are plenty of those floating around the oceans collecting data for scientific projects. They can move around slowly by altering their bouyancy and ‘gliding’ forewards.
You can see why the undersea world is still largely unexplored. It is much easier to communicate with a probe in outer space than underwater.
Autonomous submarines have been around a long time. They’ve mostly been designed for a relatively short operation time before they blow up. They were originally designed to travel in a straight line maintaining a steady depth just below the surface but modern versions have much more capability to track and follow another watercraft trying to elude them. Mostly they are carried on other non-autonomous submarines but also have been launched by plane and conventional boats.