Small Autonomous Vehicle for Precision Maneuvering in Survey and R-I-N Missions / Ship Hull Inspection and Harbor Security Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

Abstract

We designed, fabricated, and tested a new autonomous underwater vehicle system to carry out inspections of large ship hulls. The vehicle employs hull-relative navigation, so that operations can be performed without any absolute positioning data, and in poor acoustic environments. The primary payload sensor is an imaging sonar, whose data stream can be sent via fiber optic tether to a ground station for viewing. The system has been successtully demonstrated surveys and target detections on three vessels in Quincy, MA, San Diego, CA, and La Spezia, Italy. Work was performed in coordination with Bluefin Robotics Corporation, under separate ONR funding.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 30, 2006
Accession Number
ADA456619

Entities

People

  • Franz Hover

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Autonomy
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Sensors

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
  • Autonomous Vehicles
  • Circuit Boards
  • Control Systems
  • Control Systems Engineering
  • Detectors
  • Flight Control Systems
  • Ground Stations
  • Hulls (Marine)
  • Inspection
  • Measurement
  • Navigation
  • Precision
  • Ship Hulls
  • Submarine Hulls
  • Underwater Vehicles
  • Vehicles

Readers

  • Acoustical Oceanography.
  • Coastal and Marine Engineering/Sediment Transport/Hydraulic Engineering
  • Marine Hydrodynamics

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - Autonomous Systems
  • Autonomy