Research Summaries

Back Development and Validation of System Engineering Based T&E Methodology for Operational Demonstration of Autonomous Undersea Vehicles

Fiscal Year 2020
Division Research & Sponsored Programs
Department NPS Naval Research Program
Investigator(s) Brutzman, Donald P.
Sponsor NPS Naval Research Program (Navy)
Summary This work will conduct research applying Systems Engineering (SE) methodology to explore different aspects of planning, instrumenting, conducting and reporting the results of the operational demonstration of Autonomous Undersea Vehicles (AUV) possessing levels of autonomy (LoA) for sensing, perceiving, analyzing, communicating, planning, decision-making, and acting/executing to achieve mission goals as assigned by human operator(s) through cooperative human-robot interaction. This work will demonstrate a repeatable framework for functional analysis and decomposition, developing verification and validation procedures for test and evaluation (T&E) operational demonstration of autonomous systems, including metrics, processes, and tools for evaluation/measurement. This exemplar project will benefit a wide range of evolving autonomous unmanned systems (UxS) currently under development. Repeatable techniques will encourage ongoing NPS thesis work across multiple domains to support COTF efforts in multiple advanced projects.

Increasing capabilities and roles of AUVs in future undersea warfare missions poses significant and unique challenges to DoD T&E community. Underwater robot handling, transit, navigation, sensing, decision making, interaction and communication are all inherently 3D in nature. Coordinated planning and comprehension among multiple organizations, scientists, engineers, warfighters, and operators is both difficult and essential for effective test planning, data recording, conduct, analysis, and assessment. Improved T&E capabilities are required. The proven SPIDERS3D visualization system will be used to prepare and publish annotated, explorable 3D representations of multiple aspects central to this complex problem to provide insight into AUV contextual performance and decision-making. Shared collaboration across the Web can enable direct collaboration between remote COTF analysts, NPS students and others. Improved understanding, communication and portrayal is expected for T&E preparations, analysis and recommendations.
Keywords 3D graphics SPIDERS3D collaboration Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) Visualization
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