Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2015
Description:
The capabilities of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and their ability to perform tasks both autonomously and adaptively are rapidly improving, and the desire to quickly and efficiently sample the ocean environment as Earth's climate changes and natural disasters occur has increased significantly in the last decade. As such, this thesis proposes to develop a method for single and multiple AUVs to collaborate autonomously underwater while autonomously adapting their motion to changes in their local environments, allowing them to sample and track various features of interest with greater efficiency and synopticity than previously possible with preplanned AUV or ship-based surveys. This concept is demonstrated to work in field testing on multiple occasions: with a single AUV autonomously and adaptively tracking the depth range of a thermocline or acousticline, and with two AUVs coordinating their motion to collect a data set in which internal waves could be detected. This research is then taken to the next level by exploring the problem of adaptively and autonomously tracking spatiotemporally dynamic underwater fronts and plumes using individual and autonomously collaborating AUVs.
Description:
Government support under and awarded by DoD, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, NDSEG Fellowship, 32 CFR 168a, U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) GOATS ’11 (N00014-11-1-0097) and GOATS ’14 (N00014-14-1-0214) projects, ONR TechSolutions Program Office (Lightweight NSW UUV program)—Technical Support, Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Division, Newport (Code 25)—Technical Support and
Logistics
Keywords:
Remote submersibles
;
Ocean engineering
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Thesis
Format:
application/pdf
