Universal, Programmable and Affordable Power Technologies for Underwater Vehicles

Intelligent Automation, Inc (IAI) in collaboration with University of Illinois at Chicago and QinetiQ North America /Foster Miller Technology Solutions Group, is proposing a new, universal architecture for UUV power systems called the Advanced Management of Power System (AMPS). The fundamental block of this design is an isolated bidirectional power-flow uk converter. The idea was to come up with a"future-proof"power management technology that will allow the UUV to work with different energy sources with variable power capacities and to switch between battery power and alternative power sources such as fuel cells or solar cells on the fly. This design would also enable the same UUV to operate in un-tethered or tethered modes utilizing the ship"s ac power. This concept can be easily extended to a wide class of platforms encompassing the entire UXV universe (i.e., UAV, UGV and UUV) and its functionalities can be extended from dc/dc and ac/dc (charging) functionalities, which are the main foci of the phase II, to dc/ac (inverter) and ac/ac (cycloconverter) functionalities. High fidelity open loop and closed loop simulations have demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed approach in Phase I.