The general building blocks for an autonomous robot is
s
hown in Fig. 2. For an autonomous underwater robot,
the design of navigation, guidance and control systems
is much more complex than its terrestrial counterparts as the
robot has six degrees of freedom and most of the times the robot will be underactuated [5,6]. It is necessary to
identify navigation sensors and systems to ensure th
at the vehicle position and orientations are continuously
monitored and conveyed to the mission controller. Guidance algorithms for path pl
anning and obstacle avoidance
have been specifically developed for underwater robots [3,5].