Design and Development of 3D Printed based Magnetic Coupling System for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

Underwater robots are increasingly used for military, commercial, and other applications. They play a crucial role in exploring the oceans and performing tasks that are too dangerous or difficult for humans to do, such as scouting and detecting failures in marine structures/pipelines. However, due to contact-based vector thrust transmission, these robots face the problem of water leakage into their internal circuitry. Therefore, it is necessary to design and develop a fully contactless vector thrust transmission-based autonomous underwater robot with less weight in order to consume less power. In this research, a 3D printed based magnetic coupling system has been designed and developed for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV). Various components of the magnetic coupling system were 3D printed using Polylactic Acid (PLA) material. Neodymium (NdFeB) magnets were used to develop the magnetic coupling for contactless vector thrust transmission. The magnetic coupling system was successfully tested both in-lab and in a real-time environment without any mishap. It was observed that the 3D printing of the different components reduces the weight of the AUV which helps in the contactless vector thrust transmission.