Novel Actuation and Control for Unmanned Underwater Riverine Craft (UURC) Shallow-Water Behavior

Military operations in littoral and riverine environments are increasingly important, and unmanned underwater riverine craft (UURC) are likely to play a key role in such operations providing surveillance, delivering payloads (including human divers), etc. Operation in the riverine environment, however, presents a number of unique difficulties, including tidal variations, complex currents and turbulence, suspended sand and particulates, changing bottom conditions, moving obstacles, etc. To perform complex missions in this environment, UURC systems will require innovative effectors, intelligent control methods, and advanced sensors. The proposed plan of research seeks to develop (a) novel effectors and combinations of diverse effectors suitable for maneuvering in the riverine environment, (b) intelligent control methods that learn about the vehicle and environment, adapt to changes, and coordinate action among the diverse effectors, and (c) intelligent path-planning methods that can string together key behavioral primitives (swim, crawl, hover in turbulence, sleep, etc.) in a way that minimizes power consumption and maximizes the probability of successful completion of the UURC mission. It is anticipated that the result will be a set of key enabling technologies that can be applied to a wide range of future UURC systems.