Unmanned Vehicle Mission Planning Using 4D Forecasts

Abstract

We are engaged in the development of mission planning software for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) supporting the Naval Oceanographic Office's underwater glider and AUV programs. Planning missions for underwater vehicles require the consideration of "static" features such as bathymetry, territorial boundaries, and shipping lanes and also time variant features such as water density, sea state, and currents that can be estimated using model forecasts. These myriad considerations result in a 4D x N geospatial- temporal constraint satisfaction problem, where N is the number of factors and D is typically represented as a value at a specific (x,y,z) location and time t. The difficulty inherent in this decision-making process is the simultaneous manipulation and visualization of these variables, which is accomplished today through human observation of multiple 2D slices of the 4D x N cube. Another complicating factor is the large size of the forecast datasets, which can approach a gigabyte in size.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2008
Accession Number
ADA517898

Entities

People

  • Brian S. Bourgeois
  • H. A. Morris

Organizations

  • United States Naval Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • C4I
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
  • Bathymetry
  • Command And Control
  • Composite Materials
  • Data Visualization
  • Decision Support Systems
  • Geographic Information Systems
  • Geographic Regions
  • Information Systems
  • Longitude
  • Underwater Gliders
  • Underwater Vehicles
  • Unmanned
  • Unmanned Vehicles
  • Vehicles
  • Visualizations
  • Watercraft

Readers

  • Acoustical Oceanography.
  • Economics
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • Autonomy