Unmanned Systems Technology 007 | UMEX 2016 report | Navya ARMA | Launch & recovery systems | AIE 225CS | AUVs | Electric motors | Lethal autonomous weapons

62 Insight | Autonomous underwater vehicles and satellites, but the underwater use of this technology has only just begun,” says Stein Melvær Nornes, one of the researchers. “Each pixel that’s imaged with a camera like this contains a full light spectrum of colour nuances; now we’re researching how we can use all the information in the images. If we can rely on this kind of distance measurement instead of having to get physical samples, it will simplify the mapping significantly,” he says. “Some follow-up work with the image material still has to be done before the real data interpretation can begin, but we can already see that a computer can use these ‘optical fingerprints’ for automatic classification of the seabed.” Mine clearance Mine clearance has been a mainstream application for AUVs in shallower waters for some years. The Iver AUV for example is being used to create a network of underwater vehicles to monitor explosives in the Baltic Sea. It is equipped with a high-resolution side scan sonar, a magnetometer and a set of environmental sensors using the YSI Sonde 6600, which enables it to identify likely munitions and take readings of the environments tagged with the location around the targets down to depths of 120 m. Another example is the SeaFox AUV, a joint venture between ThyssenKrupp and Airbus, which is in service with the US Navy on its Avenger-class mine countermeasures vessels and MH-53E helicopters. It is a fibre-optic guided, one- shot naval mine disposal vehicle that is operated semi-autonomously. It uses a homing sonar to automatically navigate to the previously acquired position of an underwater object, identifying it with a CCTV camera and destroying it safely with a built-in, large-calibre shaped charge. The one- way concept significantly reduces the disposal time as the AUV does not have to place a charge near the object and then withdraw to a safe distance, which takes extra time. Autonomous operation With remotely operated vehicles, the system sensors are used to feed back data to the operator separately from that from the payload sensors, but researchers are now looking at how to use the data from the payload sensors in real time to inform the autonomous operation of the craft. For example, Mark Moline, director of the School of Marine Science and Policy in the University of Delaware’s College of Earth, Ocean and Environment, is looking at how to link multi-sensor systems aboard an AUV to enable the vehicle to synthesise sonar data about marine life in real time so that it can independently make decisions about what action to take next. This is a major challenge in sensor fusion. Ocean currents are always shifting, and target organisms such as squid are migrating and changing their behaviour. Along with Kelly Benoit-Bird, of Oregon State University, he has been investigating whether food sources such as fish, krill and squid play a role in attracting whales in the Pacific Ocean. They have developed software for a REMUS 600 AUV from Kongsberg to allow it to make autonomous decisions about the missions based on data such as a certain size or concentration of squid. Surveying at depths of 500 m to 1 km, two onboard PC104-format stack of computing boards analyse the response from the sonar based on size and April/May 2016 | Unmanned Systems Technology The Iver is being used to create a network of underwater vehicles to monitor explosives in the Baltic Sea (Courtesy of Iver AUV) Researchers are now looking at how to use data from payload sensors in real time to inform the autonomous operation of craft