The autonomous underwater vehicle of the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières is a young, enthusiastic and passionate student club founded in 2016. The organization is now on its fourth fully autonomous submarine prototype.
After a short pause, a new team of students has taken over the project with support from former members. The main objective is to bring the submarine's control system back into service so it can accurately execute a given position command.
2025-2026 Tasks
Control and simulations
The controls team focuses on validating the submarine's mathematical model and on LQR control. Discrepancies between the MATLAB simulation and real-world behavior are studied to improve system stability.
The work includes tuning the Q/R controller matrices, migrating the control code from Python to C++, adding a state observer and verifying real-time behavior on the Jetson AGX Xavier.
A 3D Unity-ROS simulation is also being developed to virtually validate the submarine's behavior before pool trials.
Electronics and power supply
The electronics team aims to stabilize the system's power supply and reduce electromagnetic interference.
A new power PCB is being designed to integrate 12 V, 5 V and 3.3 V voltage conversion directly on the board. The board will also include pre-charge circuits, overvoltage protection and reverse-polarity protection.
A real-time electrical monitoring system is also being developed to measure currents, voltages and temperatures, with a display on an onboard interface.
Finally, an automated emergency shutdown protocol is planned to secure the submarine in the event of a water leak or overcurrent.
Test bench and validation tools
The test bench team is working to create a complete validation environment unifying ROS, Unity 3D and MATLAB.
The goal is to compare the submarine's simulated and real trajectories in order to progressively improve the models and controllers.
A dashboard is also being developed to display sensor data in real time, including the IMU, DVL, motors and cameras. Data can be recorded to facilitate analysis after trials.
This system will make it possible to quickly diagnose anomalies and improve the submarine's reliability before pool testing.
