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www.sea-technology.com November 2016 / st 17 use. As a result, customers can have confidence not only in the robustness of the design, but also in the existing safety testing and certifications already performed on the REMUS 600. In addition, because battery management is an integral part of AUV performance and safety, the battery manage- ment system of the new-generation REMUS 100 provides protection against overvoltage, undervoltage short-circuit discharge, overcurrent detection via safety IC and charge overcurrent protection, temperature monitoring and verifi- cation of pack and board, and many other safety features. This system has recently undergone significant compo- nent, subsystem and total system testing, which, in combi- nation with more than a decade of successful battery sys- tem operation on other Hydroid platforms, has confirmed the efficacy of these features. Complementing the safety upgrades, the battery charge circuitry capability of the new-generation REMUS 100 has been updated to support a 6-hr. charge cycle. At Hydroid, we consistently hear from customers, and from the auton- omous systems community in general, about the need to recharge and redeploy vehicles more quickly during field operations. That's why we designed the new-generation REMUS 100 with higher charge capacity, as well as im- proved battery balancing and a conditioning algorithm to reduce maintenance time. While charge capacity is an important element of sys- tem capability, discharge capacity is also key to vehicle performance. Accordingly, Hydroid designed the new- generation REMUS 100 with an increased energy delivery capability, providing more power to the propulsion system to support higher vehicle speeds in an efficient and effec- tive package. In recent testing, the new-generation REMUS 100 dem- onstrated overall energy system performance exceeding specifications, and vehicle endurance was shown to be well in excess of 12 hr. when operating at a speed of 3 kt. This performance is a culmination of design features leading to lower base power draw of the vehicle architec- ture, improved hydrodynamics of the vehicle body, and improved efficiency of power delivery. Miniaturization The advanced core electronics (CE) developed for the new-generation REMUS 100 utilize modern microcon- troller technology and architecture and significantly re- duce power consumption. The new controller topology is four times more efficient than the prior generation, and the vehicle motherboard is designed to replace not only the previous REMUS motherboard, but also the CPU stack, emergency board and six serial cards. In addition to im- proved efficiency, the new vehicle electronics architecture also reduces the total CE footprint, allowing for tighter packaging and a shorter vehicle overall. In addition to being lighter and more efficient, the ad- vanced CE of the new-generation REMUS 100 uses a Xilinx ZYNQ ARM + FPGA-based System on Module (SoM) ar- chitecture, making this AUV both more potent and more versatile than previous iterations. Plus, the dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processors provide the computational power re- quired for advanced autonomy. Recent testing of the new-generation REMUS 100 CE architecture has confirmed power delivery efficiency (even at speeds close to 5 kt.), the thermal management perfor- mance, and the interface efficiency of the overall system. The efficient vehicle architecture, as well as the advance- ment of power electronics devices, has also provided re- duced energy consumption of sensors, such as the ARC SCOUT side scan sonar from Marine Sonic Technology, and Doppler velocity log from Teledyne RD Instruments, again providing greater capability in a smaller package. Customization The new-generation REMUS 100 expands on existing REMUS capabilities by adding an open-architecture plat- form for advanced autonomy, making the vehicle more ver- satile, customizable and interface agnostic. This platform is realized with a publish-subscribe database based on the open-source Robotic Operating System (ROS) running on a second processor. The new REMUS "front seat" controller performs control functions using well-tested, reliable pro- prietary control software. The "back seat" performs mission tasks, such as side scan sonar data logging and extensibil- Open architecture of the new-generation REMUS 100.