Refueling Strategies for a Team of Cooperating AUVs
Abstract
This work presents a study to enhance the Guidance and Control of a vehicle or group of vehicles with a priori and real-time inputs of team status information to manage energy consumption, specifically through refueling, while maintaining mission objectives. In scenarios where 24/7 mission operations are needed, issues arise when vehicles need to enter or leave the operations area to replete their energy supply. In these instances, gaps in coverage can form where the vehicles were stationed, and multiple vehicles may leave at the same time, potentially leaving the entire operations area empty. A novel token passing scheme is used in conjunction with a refueling algorithm which takes in both a priori and real-time data from UUVs (unmanned undersea vehicles) to accurately monitor and manage the rate at which vehicles leave the operations area to replete their energy supply. This algorithm is robust enough to manage the refueling of multiple AUVs (Autonomous Undersea Vehicles), in the undersea environment where communications using acoustic modems are noisy and intermittent. The focus of this algorithm is to allow only a specific number of vehicles to refuel at any given segment (a segment being the time it takes for a vehicle to leave the survey area, refuel, and return), and do so under the limitations of intermittent underwater communications while still maintaining accurate information about team and mission state. The intent of this algorithm is to solve a common problem in autonomous team scenarios. A typical refueling scenario involving a group of homogeneous vehicles with the same energy payload and not using a specific algorithm will cause every vehicle to leave at the same time (assuming that their refuel thresholds, the energy level at which they will leave for refueling). This algorithm solves this problem by staggering refueling starting at a high energy level, reducing the negative impact of multiple vehicles leaving at the same time out of necessity.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2011
- Accession Number
- ADA539060
Entities
People
- Kyle Demedeiros
- Ramprasad Balasubramanian
Organizations
- University of Massachusetts Dartmouth