Activities in Support of ONR Seabed Warfare Program
Abstract
Approved for Public ReleaseHerein we propose three separate activities to support the upcoming ONR Seabed Warfare program and the large amount of modern multibeam sonar data that will be collected in conjunction with this program. The first activity has the long-term goal of using artificial intelligence/machine learning techniques to create a global map of seafloor bedforms. Such a map can be a proxy for the nature of the seafloor substrate (e.g. grain size and other physical properties) as well as provide key insights into the current regime and flow conditions near the seafloor. The presence or absence of bedforms can also offer direct evidence of the erodibility and mobility of the seafloor, critical knowledge for the placement of underwater assets. Bedforms also impact the interaction of sound with the seafloor and thus knowledge of their presence, absence, and scale becomes important for acoustic propagation studies. Our initial effort will evaluate the feasibility of this approach through focusing on a geographic small area and the manual creation of a training data set for entry into publicly available AI/ML systems. Future efforts will seek dedicated, automated AI/ML procedures. Building on the thousands of square kilometers of new multibeam sonar and backscatter data to be collected as part of the Seabed Warfare Program, our second activity is to bring together a group of experts on acoustic seafloor characterization to better understand the current state-of-the-art and to how approaches may be combined or developed to extract Navy-relevant seafloor property parameters from multibeam sonar data. Finally, our third activity involves collaboration with personnel from the Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVO) in the use of the DriX Uncrewed Surface vessel. This collaboration will take place during UNH DriX operations around Honolulu Hawaii, late June/July 2024. The fundamental objective of this activity is to expose NAVO personnel to real-world operations of theDriX so that they are in a better position to evaluate its usefulness for their purposes.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Nov 08, 2024
- Source ID
- N000142412421
Entities
People
- Lawrence Mayer
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University System of New Hampshire