Directions of Development of the Autonomous Unmanned Underwater Vehicles. A Review (original) (raw)

Operations and control of unmanned underwater vehicles

Robótica, 2005

Operations and control of unmanned underwater vehicle systems are discussed in terms of systems and technologies, vehicles, operational deployments and concepts of operation. The notions underlying the specification of single vehicle operations are contrasted to new concepts of operation to illustrate the challenges they pose to control engineering. New research directions are discussed in the context of the theories and techniques from dynamic optimization and computer science. The overall discussion is done in the context of the activities of the

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles: Recent Developments and Future Prospects

International Journal for Research in Applied Science and Engineering Technology -IJRASET, 2020

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) have wide range of applications in fields like marine geoscience, military, commercial and policy sectors. Their need and applications increase day by day due to their ability operate autonomously of a host vessel which is well suited for exploration of extreme environment. Thus, research on AUVs have become popular in the present-day scenario. This paper is intended to summarise the developments in the field of AUVs in India and abroad and tends to focus on their future technical developments. I. INTRODUCTION An autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is an unmanned underwater self-propelled robot. They are a part of a larger class of unmanned underwater vehicles of which another part is Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs). The function of AUVs is to navigate through the water without the assistance of an operator performing surveys and collecting data which is achieved by pre-programming the AUVs at the surface. As against AUVs, ROVs remain tethered to the host vessel and controlled and powered by an operator through an umbilical. AUVs are well suited to geoscience applications requiring constant altitude for their ability to maintain a linear trajectory through the water. Though a ROV can draw more power and communicate real-time data, its speed mobility and spatial range are limited compared to an AUV. AUVs are playing some important roles in important cases since their inception. They have a wide range of application varying from commercial uses, research purposes, military applications, air crash investigations etc. They are used to make detailed maps and surveys of the sea floor (oil and gas industries) before building subsea infrastructure. This helps in installation of pipelines and subsea completions in a cost-effective manner with minimum disruption to the environment as compared to traditional bathymetric surveys which would be less effective or too costly. With increasing advents of technological developments in AUVs, they are used to study lakes, oceans and ocean floors. Some of the practical applications of AUVs are like the absorption and reflection of light and the presence of microscopic, Measurements of the concentration of various elements or compounds. They can also be configured as tow vehicles to deliver customized sensor packages to specific locations. In the field of Defence, AUV has become an efficient tool. A group of AUVs are required to keep a specified formation for gathering intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. They have been successfully incorporated into operations like mine countermeasures, payload delivery, anti-submarine warfare, time-critical strike etc. Due to extensive research in the field of AUVs and their application in different fields, there is a need for a deep review in this regard. The current research and development works going on and completed on AUVs and their future prospective are the focus of this paper.

Control of Autonomous UnderwaterVehicles

2012

This is to certify that the thesis entitled "Control of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles" by Mr. Raja Rout, submitted to the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela (Deemed University) for the award of Master of Technology by Research in Electrical Engineering, is a record of bonafide research work carried out by him in the Department of Electrical Engineering , under my supervision. We believe that this thesis fulfills part of the requirements for the award of degree of Master of Technology by Research.The results embodied in the thesis have not been submitted for the award of any other degree elsewhere.

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles: Trends and Transformations

Marine Technology Society Journal, 2005

Three examples of inter-agency cooperation utilizing current generation, individual Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are described consistent with recent recommendations of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy. The first steps in transforming individual AUVs into adaptive, networked systems are underway. To realize an affordable and deployable system, a network-class AUV must be designed with cost-size constraints not necessarily applied in developing solo AUVs. Vehicle types are suggested based on function and ocean operating regime: surface layer, interior and bottom layer. Implications for platform, navigation and control subsystems are explored and practical formulations for autonomy and intelligence are postulated for comparing performance and judging behavior. Laws and conventions governing intelligent maritime navigation are reviewed and an autonomous controller with conventional collision avoidance behavior is described. Network-class cost constraints can be achieved through economies of scale. Productivity and efficiency in AUV manufacturing will increase if constructive competition is maintained. Constructive strategies include interface and operating standards. Professional societies and industry trade groups have a leadership role to play in establishing public, open standards.

Design and simulation of an autonomous underwater vehicle

The Mechatronics and Dynamic Modelling Lab of the University of Florence (MDM Lab) is developing an AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle), called "Tifone", for the monitoring of underwater archaeological sites. This research is a part of the Thesaurus project, funded by Regione Toscana. The vehicle is designed in order to carry out a customizable payload according to different mission profiles. The main technical requirements of the vehicle are a maximum operative depth of 300 m, a maximum speed of 5 knots and an autonomy of more than 8 hours; a torpedo-like design allows to achieve benefits from a fluidodynamic point of view. A high manoeuvrability and hovering capacities are required to perform complex explorations and monitoring tasks: that is why a motion control based on lateral and vertical thrusters has been preferred with respect to the typical use of control surfaces, also in order to have a more reliable system as concerns component failures. The control system has to ensure a good trade-off between manoeuvrability and stability at cruise speed, too. The paper focuses on two different control strategies, corresponding to the different mission profiles the vehicle is able to perform.

Autonomous underwater vehicles for scientific and naval operations

2006

Recognizing the potential of autonomous underwater vehicles for scientific and military applications, in 1997 MIT and the NATO Undersea Research Centre initiated a Joint Research Project (GOATS), for the development of environmentally adaptive robotic technology applicable to mine counter measures (MCM) and rapid environmental assessment (REA) in coastal environments. The August 2001 GOATS Conference marked the end of this 5 years project, but did not mark the end of the work. The Centre initiated in 2002 a new long-term programme to explore and demonstrate the operational benefits and performances of AUV for covert preparation of the battlespace. Recently the work addressed the evaluation of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) AUV technology for MCM operations in response to terrorist mining of port. The paper summarizes the work performed and refers to the scientific publications derived from the AUV programme at the NATO Undersea Research Centre. #

Development of a control system for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

2010 IEEE/OES Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, 2010

This work proposes the development of a control system for an autonomous underwater vehicle dedicated to the observation of the oceans. The vehicle, a hybrid between Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASV), moves on the surface of the sea and makes vertical immersions to obtain profiles of a water column, according to a pre-established plan. The displacement of the vehicle on the surface allows the navigation through GPS and telemetry communication by radio-modem. The vehicle is 2300mm long by 320mm wide. It weighs 85kg and reaches a maximum depth of 30m. A control system based on an embedded computer is designed and developed for this vehicle that allows a vehicle's autonomous navigation. This control system has been divided into navigation, propulsion, safety and data acquisition subsystems.

Control Automation of Maritime Unmanned Complex with a Group of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

EUREKA: Physics and Engineering, 2019

It is expedient to perform underwater search operations on large water areas using a group of autonomous self-propelled underwater vehicles. However, with a large distance to the search areas, the sea transition (from one point to the other) of the underwater vehicles requires high energy costs. This leads to the necessity to use heavy-duty underwater vehicles, which determines the high cost of the search operation. The transport of underwater vehicles is proposed to be carried out with an unmanned surface vessel, equipped with actuators for the automatic release of a group of vehicles under water and receiving on board after the end of the underwater mission. The maritime unmanned complex consisting of an unmanned surface vessel and a group of autonomous underwater vehicles on its board forms a new type of marine robotics, the complete automation of which is an actual scientific and technical task. For its implementation, the underlying (basic) automation technology of the marine s...

Hybrid Coordination Strategy of a Group of Cooperating Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

IFAC-PapersOnLine, 2015

In the underwater environment, the needs of data acquisition have significantly increased over the last decades. As electromagnetic waves show poor propagation in sea water, acoustical sensing is generally preferred. However, the emergence of small and low cost autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) allow for rethinking the underwater use of optical sensors. Their small coverage can be significantly improved by using a fleet of coordinated underwater robots. This paper presents a strategy to coordinate a group of robots in order to systematically survey the seabed and detect small objects or singularities. The proposed hybrid coordination strategy is based on two main modes. The first mode relies on a swarm algorithm to organize the team in geometrical formation. In the second mode, the group formation is maintained using a hierarchical coordination. A finite state machine controls the high level hybrid strategy by defining the appropriate coordination mode according to the evolution of the mission. Before the sea validation, the behavior and the performance of the hybrid coordination strategy are first evaluated in simulation. The control of individual robots relies on visual servoing, implemented with the OpenCV library, and the simulation tool is based on Blender software. The dynamics of the robots has been implemented in a realistic way in Blender using the Bullet solver and the estimated hydrodynamic coefficients. This paper presents and discusses the preliminary results of the hybrid coordination strategy applied on a fleet of 3 AUVs.