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

65 Autonomous underwater vehicles | Insight specific, such as a certain species or a combination of predators and prey. With this in mind, Echoview’s analyses are stored as visual ‘data flows’ that are saved as separate files that can be replaced for other missions to give alternative responses to the data, for example to provide an alternative tracking technique if a different type of marine animal is detected. With the same aim in mind, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US are using autonomous techniques developed by NASA for autonomous space vehicles to give AUVs more cognitive instructions rather than a set of low-level programming scripts. For example, a mission may be a list of locations to explore, along with any time constraints, as well as physical directions such as staying a certain distance above the seafloor. The AUV software then plans a mission, choosing which locations to explore, in which order and within a given timeframe. If an unforeseen event prevents the robot from completing a task it can choose to drop that task, on the fly. One software module acts as the ‘captain’ to provide the high-level instructions, while another module acts as the ‘navigator’ to make location decisions. A third module processes data to detect collisions and handle the diagnostics of the craft. The researchers tested their system in an autonomous underwater glider, and showed that the AUV was able to operate safely among a number of other autonomous vehicles while receiving higher-level commands. Using the system, the glider was able to adapt its mission plan to avoid getting in the way of other vehicles. Inspection As mentioned at the beginning of this article, SeaRobotics is building the latest version of the Marlin AUV (the Mk3) for Lockheed Martin. It is designed for surveying and applications such as pipeline inspection, at depths of 4000 m, deepwater survey and life-of-field support services for oil and gas installations. The key for the Marlin Mk3’s design to allow it to operate at that extended depth is the development of key navigation, sensor and autonomous control technologies. Developing a modular, swappable, ‘plug and play’ mission Unmanned Systems Technology | April/May 2016 The REMUS 600 can make autonomous mission decisions based on data about marine life (Courtesy of Kongsberg Maritime) We’ve shown that it’s possible to use acoustics to find a species, to have an AUV target specific sizes of that species and to follow the species