Browse Topic: Unmanned underwater and surface vehicles
Astrolight recently demonstrated undetectable, unjammable, and high-bandwidth laser-based ship-to-ship communication with its POLARIS terminal during REPMUS'25, NATO's largest unmanned maritime exercise. During the Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping using Maritime Uncrewed Systems (REPMUS) /Dynamic Messenger mission, hosted by the Portuguese Navy, POLARIS laser terminals maintained a stable, jam-proof horizon-limited laser-based link between two vessels: NRP Dom Francisco de Almeida and NRP Dom Carlos I. During testing, the link wasn't detected by a single sensor of other participating ships, drones, and land assets.
Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) are used around the world to conduct difficult environmental, remote, oceanic, defense and rescue missions in often unpredictable and harsh conditions. A new study led by Flinders University and French researchers has now used a novel bio-inspired computing artificial intelligence solution to improve the potential of UUVs and other adaptive control systems to operate more reliability in rough seas and other unpredictable conditions.
Anduril Industries Orange County, CA Contact@anduril.com
Northrop Grumman San Diego, CA jacqueline.rainey@ngc.com
The Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) is bringing this year's XPONENTIAL 2023 to the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, Colorado. The event, which runs from May 8 - 11, will feature three days of educational programming and more than 600 exhibitors representing all aspects of the unmanned vehicle and robotics industries showcasing their latest technology to attendees from all over the world. So, what's on tap for this year's XPONENTIAL 2023? The theme for this year's XPONENTIAL is “The Blueprint for Autonomy” and AUVSI has updated the event with new features based on attendee feedback.
To achieve battlespace dominance, energy flow characterizations of individual platforms and the aggregate battlespace must be developed to adapt and exploit the variable operating conditions. Army Research Laboratory, White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico The future battlefield will be filled with multiple dissimilar energy networks including unmanned and manned vehicular platforms actively engaged in cooperative control and communications capable of overpowering an adversary and dominating the battlespace. This chaotic multi-domain operational environment will be limited by variable operating conditions (mission profiles, terrain, atmospheric conditions), copious amounts of real-time actionable intelligence derived from weapon and sensor suites, and most importantly, the energy capabilities of each platform. To achieve dominance within the battlespace, energy flow characterizations of individual platforms and the aggregate battlespace must be developed with respect to the variable operating conditions. As an example, consider the power-requirement differences between the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator (an unmanned aerial vehicle), the Gladiator Tactical Unmanned Ground Vehicle, and the Mine Countermeasures Unmanned Surface Vessel (an unmanned sea vehicle). The predator is designed to provide air superiority, support fires, maneuvers, communication, and coordination-based missions. The Gladiator supports fires, maneuvers, communication, and coordination-based missions. The mine counter-measures vessel is designed to assist with maneuver and coordination-based missions and could be extended to support fire-based missions. Current and future military operations will routinely coordinate with multiple dissimilar heterogeneous systems spanning multiple domains resulting in Multi-Domain Operations (MDO).
The current fleet of United States Navy (USN) Mine Countermeasures (MCM) ships, the Avenger class, is reaching the end of its planned service life. To fill the capability gaps left by removing these ships from the fleet, and to take advantage of technological advances in environmental sensing and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), the Navy will be acquiring new systems to perform the MCM mission. The Department of Defense (DOD) acquisition process aims to fill capability gaps with materiel solutions through development of new or improved systems or the purchase of existing systems. Beginning the acquisition process with ample knowledge of potential materiel solutions and their expected performance improves the likelihood of program success.
In fiscal year 2016, the Senate Armed Services Committee ordered the Navy to increase its fleet to 355 ships. However, the lack of construction facilities impedes this endeavor. Rear Admiral Brian Luther, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budgets, estimated that the objective of 355 ships will not come to fruition until the 2050s. As a result, the U.S. Navy is exploring potential fleet restructuring options.
This research evaluates the entanglement of an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) operating in marine vegetation common to littoral environments. Entanglement was assessed for a traditional UUV with an open, three-bladed propeller transiting a vegetation field at a constant heading and depth. Factors such as the vegetation density, vegetation placement and configuration, propeller revolutions per minute (RPM), and vehicle speed were varied to determine their impact on vehicle entanglement. Results provide insight to the mechanism of entanglement and operating conditions that result in a high or low likelihood of entanglement. These results are of particular interest to the Department of Defense as the military's use of UUVs in littoral environments becomes more prevalent.
Metal-air batteries can be used in a variety of applications ranging from range extenders for electric vehicles to emergency power systems. Metal-sea-water batteries are primarily used for underwater applications ranging from torpedoes to underwater unmanned vehicles. A team of researchers at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT, has developed an oil displacement system to mitigate open-circuit corrosion in metal-air and metal-seawater batteries.
The bottom of a lake or an ocean is an ever-changing place. Water flows back and forth in shifting currents. Sunlight heats the sand and darkness cools it back down. The sand itself moves, unveiling rocks and man-made objects of peculiar shape underneath.
As the U.S. Navy increases its investment in its fleet of unmanned undersea vehicles (UUV), suppliers of rugged commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) subsystems, providing solutions for mission computers, network switches and routers, and data storage are meeting the needs of these unique platforms.
The objective of Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) Project MR-201002, Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Munitions and Explosives of Concern (MEC) Detection System, was to integrate an untethered and unmanned underwater vehicle with a total field magnetometer for underwater munitions detection and upgrade magnetic noise compensation software to reduce interference from electrical and dynamic influences such as vehicle heading, pitch and roll.
Advances in unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) are providing government agencies and commercial organizations with new capabilities across a variety of mission requirements. However, many underwater vehicles only address specific criteria or support well-defined (and limited) niches. As an example, the Naval Sea Systems Command's (NAVSEA) Littoral Battlespace Sensing (LBS) system includes the LBS-G long-endurance glider to collect oceanographic data, but also needs the LBS-AUV for military applications.
The goal of this work was to develop algorithms and software to generate a path that takes into account the direction of waves and wind as much as possible in order to mitigate potential damage to an autonomous underwater vehicle. A risk-based path planning algorithm to analyze real-world sensory data is combined with an enhanced sea surface model to generate a safe path.
Among the various components of a submarine pipeline, the vertical section known as a riser is critical to managing the pipeline. This section connects the piping that runs along the bottom of the sea with the floating production platform.
Numerous modern military and commercial vehicles rely on portable, battery-powered sources for electric energy. Due to their highly specialized functions these vehicles are typically custom-designed, produced in limited numbers, and expensive. To mitigate the power system's contribution to these undesirable characteristics, this paper proposes a modular power system architecture consisting of “smart” power battery units (SPUs) that can be readily interconnected in numerous ways to provide distributed and coordinated system power management. The proposed SPUs contain a battery power source and a power electronics converter. They are compatible with multiple battery chemistries (or any energy storage device that can produce a terminal voltage), allowing them to be used with both existing and future energy storage technologies. The internal power converter doubles as a charger, allowing the SPUs to be charged with standard power levels (e.g 120 V ac) via a convenient interface port, eliminating the logistical problems associated with batteries requiring unique chargers. Further, these SPUs are modular and may be arranged in vehicles having a wide range of sizes and dimensions. A prototype SPU design using a high energy density Li-ion cell has been developed and is presented here with proof-of-concept simulation results, comparisons to existing architectures, and a discussion of its advantages and disadvantages when compared with conventional systems. It is believed that the SPU concept could have wide-ranging applications including field equipment for sea-, ground- and air-based personnel, hybrid and electric vehicles, and small unmanned aerial (UAV) and underwater (UUV) vehicles.
This software generates high-quality plans for carrying out mine-sweeping activities under resource constraints. The autonomous planning and replanning system for unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) takes as input a set of prioritized mine-sweep regions, and a specification of available UUV resources including available battery energy, data storage, and time available for accomplishing the mission. Mine-sweep areas vary in location, size of area to be swept, and importance of the region. The planner also works with a model of the UUV, as well as a model of the power consumption of the vehicle when idle and when moving.
An ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), now undergoing development, is a less-massive, more-efficient means of exploiting the same basic principle as that of the proposed system described in “Alternative OTEC Scheme for a Submarine Robot” (NPO-43500), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 33, No. 1 (January 2009), page 50. The proposed system as described previously would be based on the thawing-expansion/freezing-contraction behavior of a wax or perhaps another suitable phase-change material (PCM). The power generated by the system would be used to recharge the batteries in a battery-powered unmanned underwater vehicle [UUV (essentially, a small exploratory submarine robot)] of a type that has been deployed in large numbers in research pertaining to global warming. A UUV of this type travels between the ocean surface and depths, measuring temperature and salinity.
There is a wide range of potential military applications in which ambiguity in bearing occurs with respect to sound. For example, autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could employ a sensor to determine the bearing of an explosion and conduct battle damage assessment (BDA) on it. With existing sensors this is difficult to do because the explosion is too short in duration to use the Doppler effect to determine the bearing. Also, an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) acting as a quiet platform to tow a short, omni-directional hydrophone array must contend with bearing ambiguity.
A proposed system for exploiting the ocean thermal gradient to generate power would be based on the thawing-expansion/ freezing-contraction behavior of a wax or perhaps another suitable phase-change material. The power generated by this system would be used to recharge the batteries in a battery-powered unmanned underwater vehicle [UUV (essentially, a small exploratory submarine robot)] of a type that has been deployed in large numbers in research pertaining to global warming. A UUV of this type travels between the ocean surface and various depths, measuring temperature and salinity.
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