Developing Fleets of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have a demonstrated capability to collect valuable data for scientific and military purposes. Historically, individual vehicles have been used. To reduce the overall time and cost of acquiring data over large areas, multiple vehicles must be used. A fleet of five AUVs, capable of underwater commendation, was fabricated. These AUVs include small submarines, referred to as “swimmers,” and small, two-tracked vehicles, referred to as “crawlers.” The control and communication algorithms developed in this work will enable AUVs to use formations to search for mines and to communicate with each other in order to implement cooperative behavior. Languages and logics were developed to enable collaborative operations among the vehicles.