AUVs as Integrated Acoustic Sensors for Concurrent Detection, Localization and Classification in Littoral Mine Countermeasures

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) are rapidly being transitioned into operational systems for national defense, offshore exploration, and ocean science. AUVs provide excellent sensor platform control, allowing for e.g. accurate acoustic mapping of seabeds not easily reached by conventional platforms, such as the deep ocean. However, the full potential of the robotic platforms is far from exhausted by such applications. Thus, for example, most seabed mapping applications use imaging sonar technology, the data volume of which cannot be transmitted back to the operators in real time due to the severe bandwidth limitation of the acoustic communication. The sampling patterns are therefore pre-programmed and the data is stored for post-mission analysis, with indiscriminate distribution of the sampling throughout the area of interest, irrespective of whether features of interest are present or not. However, todays computing technology allows for a significant amount of signal processing and analysis to be performed on the platforms. For example new approches for concurrent detection and mapping in unknown environments may be implemented on the platforms, the results of which may subsequently be used autonomously for real-time, adaptive sampling to optimally concentrate the sampling in area of interest, and compress the results to a few parameters which may be transmitted back to the operators. Such new autonomous and adaptive sensing concepts for concurrent detection, localization and classification of proud and buried objects, combining environmental acoustics, signal processing state-of-the-art robotics, are being developed under the SACLANTCEN-MIT GOATS Joint Research Program [1-6]. [Work supported by ONR and SACLANTCEN]