Abstract

The last decade has been devoted towards further development of the UUV unmanned underwater vehicles which may be of two types. There are the USV unmanned surface vehicles and UUV unmanned underwater vehicles. There is a growing interest to work out and implement the fully advanced AUV autonomous underwater vehicles. The main drivers towards development of such the vehicles are the technologies of autonomous systems, sensors and effectors, innovative materials including the nano-materials and "intelligent" materials, innovative energy supply sources, innovative propulsion systems combining the efficient and silent both the engines and propellers, innovative IT technologies including the double mode air-underwater control, navigation and communication systems. The additional set of features the AUV vehicles may possess are the stealth-based and bio-technology-based solutions. The commercial applications of AUV vehicles may perform the conventional patrol and reconnaissance tasks. The navy devoted AUV vehicles may enable to perform the reconnaissance and combat missions. Despite of applications it is necessary to implement the advanced on-board hardware and software solutions to provide the high level of autonomy to the AUV vehicles. The general requirements to obtain an autonomous AUV vehicle are concentrated on the autonomy from the energy supply, self-control and self-navigation point of view. It may be associated with using no-communication with the centre of mission. Such the level of autonomy requires the innovative solutions concerning the vehicle's sensors, effectors and control. The biggest challenge associated with the AUV vehicles development is to work out and implement a kind of an intelligent AUV vehicle. A major difficulty to obtain such the vehicle is to acquire the precise data from the surrounding environment, to process these data and to use them to perform all the tasks and mission in real time domain. The AUV-AI-based vehicle should be equipped with a kind a mini-brain to compare the on-board simulated virtual reality with the reality outside the vehicle due to activity of sensors, mini-brain control system and effectors. Such the on-line comparison may enable to obtain the expected functionality, performance and safety of the AUV-AI-based vehicle for the benefit of mission.

Authors (2)