The Odyssey IV autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is the next generation of unmanned subsurface robots from the MIT Sea Grant AUV Laboratory. The Odyssey IV AUV has a novel propulsion system, which includes a pair of azimuthing thrusters for maneuvering in surge and heave. An analytical model was developed to describe the complex nonlinear vehicle dynamics, and experiments were performed to re...

Formation control, which is a core problem in multi-autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) systems, plays an important role realizing safe and accurate cooperation of multi-AUV systems. This paper provides study on fault-tolerant formation control for multiple stochastic AUV systems under Markovian switching topologies. Considering the effect noise communication topology, novel leader-following gr...

The use of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to inspect industrial infrastructure requires the precise, coordinated movement AUV relative subsea objects. One significant system is production (SPS), which includes wells for oil and gas production, located on seabed. present paper suggests a method accurate navigation AUVs in distributed SPS coordinate space using video information. This bas...

The paper discusses the use of dual stave forward-looking sonar to build a threedimensional underwater model for navigation in restricted waterways. The sonar normally provides separate horizontal and vertical images but when the information is synthesized into a single three-dimensional model it permits, in certain circumstances, the AUV to plan and carry out a trajectory where no path is othe...

This paper describes a feasibility study that is included with the research, development and testing of a micro communications sonobuoy deployable by Maritime Fixed wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (M-UAV) and rotor wing Quad Copters which are both currently being developed by the University of Adelaide. The micro communications sonobuoy is developed to act as a seamless communication relay betwee...

As autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) enter operational service an assessment of their reliability is timely. Using the Autosub AUV as an example, several design issues affecting reliability are discussed, followed by an analysis of recorded faults. Perhaps contrary to expectations, failures rarely involved the autonomous nature of the vehicle. Rather, faults were typical of those that occur...

Abstract: Improvements in high resolution small forward looking sonar (FLS) and computer processing have made it possible to develop an obstacle avoidance system (OAS) for small diameter Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV). An AUV with such a system can maneuver around unanticipated obstacles that may be proud of the ocean floor. This ability can prevent serious damage to the vehicle or the en...

Exploration for robotic mapping is typically handled using greedy entropy reduction. Here we show how to apply information lookahead planning to a challenging instance of this problem in which an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) maps hydrothermal vents. Given a simulation of vent behaviour we derive an observation function to turn the planning for mapping problem into a POMDP. We test a vari...

Maintaining accurate localization of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is difficult because electronic signals such as GPS are highly attenuated by water making established land-based localization systems, such as GPS, useless underwater. Instead we propose an alternative approach which integrates position information of other vehicles to reduce the error and uncertainty of the on-board po...

Mine Countermeasures (MCM) present a challenging motion planning problem when taking into account ocean currents, complex bathymetry, and vehicle dynamics. In an effort to improve autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) motion planning for MCM, this work presents a Physical Traveling Salesmen Problem (PTSP) approach as a way to quickly and robustly generate motions for the reacquisition and identif...