A Cross-domain Dynamic Gateway
Abstract
Today, unmanned systems are used in various navy applications such as physical oceanography, Arctic observation, coastal surveillance, mine detection/neutralization, and submarine detection. Current and future naval missions can benefit from heterogeneous unmanned systems that collaboratively perform long-term missions with minimal interruptions and human supervision. This work proposes a transformative architecture for the collaborative operation of a heterogeneous fleet of unmanned systems to accomplish mission requirements efficiently and cost-effectively. The fleet will utilize unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), and underwater gliders (UGs). The goal is to create a collaborative system of systems that exploits the strengths of each vehicle for maximizing anomaly detection and spatial observations. The architecture is built to manage resources to establish stable energy and data transfer cycles necessary for persistent operation. The three critical elements are energy,communication, and docking. In this work, the surface station serves as both 1) an energy repository that can continually sustain fleet operations and 2) a mission operator and data handling center with a continuous data link to the mission operator over satellite and all assets in the air, on the surface, or submerged. This cross-domain dynamic gateway will provide the technology for autonomous launch, recovery, and energy maintenance with minimal human interaction with infrastructure and science for heterogeneous resource management and decision-making that will be the driver for future research in this field. The approach will advance the autonomy of unmanned maritime systems and directly addresses implementation complexities and experimental demands to result in the unattendedpermanent deployment of large-scale networked systems, extending missions from days to weeks and weeks to months responding to changing conditions.Publicly Releasable
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Nov 21, 2023
- Source ID
- N000142412019
Entities
People
- Nina Mahmoudian
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- Purdue University
- United States Navy