The primary goal of this project is to integrate and demonstrate multiple levels of autonomous decision making capabilities on iPUMA autonomous underwater vehicle. These capabilities are (1) in-situ mission modification and planning; (2) vehicle control to optimize maneuvering, manage the power consumption, and to maintain vehicle safety; (3) autonomous obstacle and terrain recognition; and (4) autonomous adjustments in the sonar line-ups and vehicle operating modes to optimize the sensing performance. Such autonomous behavior will be enabled by JPL-developed Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing (CARACaS) intelligent autonomous control architecture that will maintain a higher level of situation awareness and mission performance assessment. After development, simulation, and integration of the autonomous components, this project will demonstrate a set of intelligent behaviors including obstacle and terrain avoidance, terrain following within constricted environments (such as a harbor), real time ahead-looking sonar (ALS) optimization via sensor mode selection and vehicle operation, and on-the-fly mission modification based on in-situ sensor performance assessments.
This work is funded by the Office of Naval Research.
09/26/2010
Gail Woodward - Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Non-NASA funded
