This paper presents the design of hardware platform, which is a test bed for the navigation system and hovering type AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) under the OCP (Open Control Platform). The developed AUV test bed consists of two hulls, four thrusters, and the navigation system which uses a SBC2440II with IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit). And the SMC (Sliding Mode Control) is chosen for the diving and steering control of the AUV. This paper uses ACE/TAO RTEC (Real-Time Event Channel) as a middleware platform in order to control and communicate in the developed AUV test bed. In this paper, two computers are used and each of them is dedicated for the specific purpose, the first computer is used as the SMC module and the middleware platform for the ACE/TAO RTEC and the second computer is used for the sensor controller. We analyze the performance of the AUV test bed under the OCP.