Controlling buoyancy of underwater device using fuel cells and propellers

Abstract

An underwater device with buoyancy control as well as a method and computer program product for buoyancy control of an underwater device. Upon receiving an estimate of a current depth of the underwater device, a calculation is performed to determine the difference between the estimated current depth of the underwater device and the target. Based on such a difference exceeding a threshold value, an input to fuel cells in the underwater device is generated to either produce a net gas rate which is accumulated by flexible membranes to gain a volume which generates a positive buoyancy force or to intake gasses which generates a negative buoyancy force. The positive buoyancy force and the negative buoyancy force are used to control the depth of the underwater device to reach a target depth from the current depth.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.