SBIR-STTR Award

The objective of this Phase I SBIR project is to develop an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) with integrated sensing system for efficient and accurate spatial sampling for robust navigation, bathymetric SLAM, and current surveys in riverine environments. The proposed AUV system utilizes innovative propulsion, power harvesting, power management, hull design, and energy-efficient planning and control concepts to achieve a compact vehicle with extended upstream range. The system integrates a suite of intelligent mapping, localization, and navigation algorithms to reliably operate in incompletely known riverine environments with intermittent GPS availability. The proposed project addresses the development of a system-level architecture, designs of the physical AUV devices and accompanying algorithms, trade-off analyses, and analytical and simulation-based validation studies to estimate performance capabilities of the proposed system. This will provide a solid foundation for the Phase II effort, which will address the complete hardware and software implementation of the proposed integrated system and extensive experimental validation of the system capabilities. The system design addresses the desirable characteristics of low-cost and compact design, high endurance, extensibility for various mission scenarios, effective control actuators and control algorithms, and effective autonomous mapping capabilities in GPS-intermittent and GPS-denied environments.

Benefit:
There are many current and potential military and civilian applications of an autonomous underwater vehicle that offers power efficiency, extended range, upstream navigation capabilities, and integrated sensing system for efficient and accurate spatial sampling such as surveillance, reconnaissance, search and rescue, mine countermeasure, real time battle field command observation, border patrol, disaster relief, law enforcement, remote sensing, environmental monitoring, bridge and dam monitoring, emergency communications relay, marine biodiversity research, and aquaculture management.

Keywords:
Navigation, Navigation, bathymetry, SLAM, Light-weight AUV, Riverine Sensing, Power Efficiency, extended range, reconnaissance

The objective of this Phase II SBIR project is to develop and experimentally demonstrate a compact lightweight Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) with integrated sensing system for riverine reconnaissance (bathymetry and water current), robust autonomous upstream and downstream navigation, and bathymetric SLAM with minimal reliance (possibly none) on GPS availability. The development of an AUV for efficient and accurate spatial sampling with the required characteristics outlined above poses multiple technical challenges and an effective solution involves multiple innovative technological ingredients to overcome significant challenges arising from the requirements of compactness, high range, ability to transit upstream, and autonomous GPS-independent navigation. The proposed AUV system utilizes a synergistic combination of hydrodynamically efficient hull and propulsion designs, power management, an optimized integrated sensor suite, energy-efficient path planning and control algorithms, obstacle avoidance system, data fusion and navigation, and geo-referencing and SLAM algorithms to achieve a compact vehicle with extended upstream range and reliable autonomous operation in incompletely known riverine environments with intermittent GPS availability. The proposed project addresses the development of the AUV, designs and implementations of its hardware and software subsystems, hardware-in-the-loop simulation studies, and field testing of experimental prototypes of the AUV.

Benefit:
There are many current and potential military and civilian applications of an autonomous underwater vehicle that offers power efficiency, extended range, upstream navigation capabilities, and integrated sensing system for efficient and accurate spatial sampling such as surveillance, reconnaissance, search and rescue, port security, mine countermeasure, real time battle field command observation, border patrol, disaster relief, law enforcement, remote sensing, environmental monitoring and change detection, bridge and dam monitoring, emergency communications relay, environmental research, marine biodiversity research, and aquaculture management.

Keywords:
Riverine Sensing, Riverine environment, bathymetry, extended range, GPS Intermittent, Compact AUV, reconnaissance, Autonomous navigation