STM32 Based Underwater Control Card Design

Abstract

Unmanned underwater vehicles (ROV/AUV) are robotic systems that can float underwater, are autonomous and remotely controlled. Today, unmanned underwater vehicles are used in a wide range of areas such as underwater search and rescue operations, ship underwater maintenance and repair operations, taking images from dangerous environments where divers cannot enter, military use, inspection of wrecks and underwater cleaning. The number of ROV/AUVs with domestic hardware and software on the sector is very limited. Because of this deficiency, we worked on such a project to support nationalisation. Designed for underwater vehicles, the Control Board used the ARM-based STM32 microprocessor and auxiliary elements such as IMU, pressure sensor, communication card. Only 2% of microprocessors produced in the world are used in personal computers. The remaining 98% is inside the electronic devices in our lives. There's no way anyone familiar with the developments in electronics these days has ever did not heard of ARM. Almost all mobile devices, especially mobile phones, have processors with ARM architecture. The designed control card can be used for vehicle control and communication with the ground station in remote controlled and autonomous vehicles. In this study, the design of the Control Board, which will perform depth and direction control of underwater vehicles using PID algorithms, was explained. Instead of automatic cruise control systems for ROV / AUV platforms that currently need to be imported from abroad, it is aimed to develop innovative automatic cruise control systems (hardware and software) and sub-components domestically.