Fiscal Year	2015
Division	Research & Sponsored Programs
Department	Consortium for Robotics & Unmanned Systems Education & Research
Investigator(s)	Buettner, Jr., Raymond R. Du Toit, Noel E.
Sponsor	Office of Naval Research (Navy)
Summary	The Arctic is steadily increasing in strategic military and economic importance, driven by global policies and climate change. The Department of Navy (DoN) recognized this with the establishment of the Ice Experimentation (ICEX) program, a collaborative effort between DoN and scientists, to understand oceanographic and ice conditions in the Arctic. However, this environment is extremely inaccessible and dangerous to human, necessitating the use of unmanned system operations. Significant advances have been made in ground and aerial robotics, but solutions are lagging for the underwater domain, and even more so for under-ice operations. This is in large part due to the harsh operating environment and challenges in underwater robot localization, sensing, perception, control, and communications. Historical Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) development efforts have focused on open-ocean, long-range missions. Under-ice operations require a different set of capabilities: the ability to navigate in a GPS denied environment for long periods of time and operate in close proximity to objects (including ice) with high precision. This is required even for basic functions such as navigation, deployment and recovery, docking (for persistent, long range operations), and completing more specific mission objectives. These proximal and navigational operations require unprecedented understanding and interpretation of the physical underwater environment. The operational objective of this proposal is to incrementally gain experience with AUVs in under-ice environments of increasing complexity. The technical focus of this proposal is to develop tools that facilitate such understanding: 3D mapping for navigation, planning, and mission execution; and terrain-relative navigation.
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Publications	Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data	Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal