This paper addresses the control problem of inspecting underwater pipeline on the seabed, with coordinated multiple autonomous underwater vehicles in a formation. Based on the leader-follower strategy, the dedicated nonlinear path following controller is rigorously built on Lyapunov-based design, driving a fleet of vehicles onto assigned parallel paths elevated and offset from the underwater pi...

Maritime Platforms Division within DSTO is currently studying the science and technology of autonomous underwater vehicles for defence applications. Part of this work involves a study of the hydrodynamics and manoeuvrability of these vehicles and the development of methods to determine the hydrodynamic coefficients of submerged bodies as a function of their shape. This report describes the appl...

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have successfully performed complex behaviors in the service of military objectives. These behaviors have involved individual vehicles, but multiple vehicles operating autonomously and collaboratively are required to engage in open environment missions such as mine countermeasures (MCM). This requires that vehicles communicate with one another, exchanging i...

This paper reports the formulation and evaluation of a centralized extended Kalman filter designed for a novel navigation system for underwater vehicles. The navigation system employs Doppler sonar, depth sensors, synchronous clocks, and acoustic modems to achieve simultaneous acoustic communication and navigation. The use of a single moving reference beacon eliminates the requirement for the u...

A fuzzy logic based general purpose modular control architecture is presented for underwater vehicle autonomous navigation, control and collision avoidance. Three levels of fuzzy controllers comprising the sensor fusion module, the collision avoidance module and the motion control module are derived and implemented. No assumption is made on the specific underwater vehicle type, on the amount of...

Autonomous docking using underwater vehicles will play an important role in long-term underwater explorations and surveys. The autonomous docking mission for an autonomous underwater vehicle at a stationary platform involves a vehicle and a platform matching both position, orientation and velocity. The docking missions therefore require intelligent control systems for precise and soft operation...

Glider class autonomous underwater vehicles operate and collect water column data for long periods of time, even weeks, before the need for recovery. However, they possess only rudimentary navigation and localization capabilities. Gliders are under-actuated vehicles and prone to water currents disturbances hence their localization error increase significantly while dead-reckoning underwater. In...

This paper discusses the use of distributed autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) for multistatic processing and tracking of underwater target. A localized processing chain is implemented on each AUV to generate the contact report of an underwater target that is transmitted to a command center via underwater acoustic communications (UWA). The contact reports from several AUVs are combined toget...

Underwater sensor network consists of number of various sensors and autonomous underwater vehicles deployed underwater to coordinate, interact and share information among them to carry out sensing and monitoring functions. Underwater environment differs from terrestrial radio environment both in terms of energy costs and channel propagation phenomena. The goal of the project is to reduce the oc...