Research Summaries

Back Long-Endurance, Integrated UUV/USV Tactical Environmental Sensing System

Fiscal Year 2015
Division Research & Sponsored Programs
Department Naval Research Program
Investigator(s) Joseph, John E.
Sponsor NPS Naval Research Program (Navy)
Summary This study investigates the cooperative use of small undersea gliders (eg, Spray, Slocum and Seagliders) and surface-based gliders (eg, Wave Gliders, AutoNaut) as an integrated, long-endurance ISR and environmental sensing system that provides the warfighter with real-time acoustic and oceanographic information. Our efforts will focus on advancing a collaborative UUV/USV system and demonstrating an at-sea capability for operational situational awareness and timely wide-area environmental assessment applicable to Undersea Warfare and Battlespace Awareness missions. The research will largely leverage existing NPS glider and USV platforms and build upon our initial theoretical/modeling results and preliminary field datasets. The research initiative is unique in that it emphasizes both engineering (collaborative navigation strategies) and science (acoustic propagation) objectives. Students will have the opportunity to develop thesis ideas on topics such as controls for a multi-asset system, acoustic communication of critical data and navigational information in challenging environments, and impacts of environmental factors affecting system performance and optimization. Students will also be able to investigate innovative methods of fine-tuning and adapting this distributed system in response to changing environmental conditions and/or partial loss in capability.
Keywords
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