NAVAL DRONES

by Kenneth A. Stewart, NPS Naval Postgraduate School Research Associate Tad Masek, left,  Research  Associate Professor Douglas Horner, center,  and  Research  Assistant  Professor Noel Du Toit, right,  are pictured  on the frozen surface  of  Pavilion Lake,  British Columbia with two   of the Autonomous Underwater  Vehicles (AUV) that they are using to conduct  experiments on  AUV operation in extreme, under-ice environments.   Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) Research Associate Professor Douglas Horner and Research Assistant Professor Noel Du Toit recently returned from remote Pavilion Lake, British Columbia where they investigated Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) operations in extreme, under-ice environments. “The Navy is very interested in our ability to work under the ice using autonomous vehicles,” said Horner. Pavilion Lake is located some 250...

Guest post written for UUV Week by Sean Walsh. Should robots sink ships with people on them in time of war? Will it be normatively acceptable and technically possible for robotic submarines to replace crewed submarines? These debates are well-worn in the UAV space. Ron Arkin’s classic work  Governing Lethal Behaviour in Autonomous Robots  has generated considerable attention since it was published six years ago in 2009. The centre of his work is the “ethical governor” that would give normative approval to lethal decisions to engage enemy targets. He claims that International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and Rules of Engagement can be programmed into robots in machine readable language. He illustrates his work with a prototype that engages in several test cases. The drone does not bomb the Taliban because they are in a cemetery and targeting “cultural property” is forbidden. The drone selects an “alternative release point” (i.e. it waits for the tank to move a certain distance)...

Guest post by Terry Miller, Capt, USN Retired and John Rapp. A covert, in-mission, full kill chain, integrated, Mine Warfare Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) is described. It will significantly compress the kill chain beyond today’s overt detect to engage methods. It also eliminates or reduces costs associated with today’s multi-system approach. Over time, the MCM practice will inevitably evolve from overt to covert: this natural transition is discussed. The Navy asserts that time line improvements are urgently needed, but equally important is improved affordability. Cost savings for the integrated AUV are expected to be less than $5K per mine kill. The paper describes sign ificant potential to reduce system costs using an integrated AUV solution instead of the multi-system approach of RMMV, AQS-20 and Archerfish. S uch an AUV includes the vehicle itself, with its associated power and propulsion and maneuvering systems, autonomous embedded intelligence, navigation system, so...

The researchers at CoCoRo continue to push the limits of autonomy and swarming behavior with autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).  Recently, they've taken their AUVs out of the controlled laboratory tanks and into the wild, with small scale tests in ponds, lakes, and protected ocean harbors. These robots are prototypes designed to explore small scale autonomous group behavior.  But the ocean tests hint at possibilities of using smaller marine robots to perform useful functions. Unmanned Underwater Vehicles employed in military and research operations range in size from man portable, weighing less than 100 pounds, to monsters such as Boeing's Echo Ranger , which weighs more than 5,000 kilograms. Small scale AUVs weighing less than a few kilograms or so are limited in endurance primarily due to battery size.  More importantly, the ocean environment presents a number of challenges for tinier AUVs including surf and currents, poor visibility, and even hungry marin...

Researchers at Austria's University of Graz have demonstrated the largest collection of swarming autonomous underwater vehicles with their Collective Cognitive Robots (CoCoRo) project.  A total of 41 autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) were assembled for recent swarm testing at the University's  Artificial Life Lab . Though funded by the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for Research (FP7) with the intention of developing civilian innovations for environmental monitoring and research, CoCoRo has implications for future military unmanned underwater vehicle swarm activity.   Under development since 2011, CoCoRo's swarm demonstration consists of three types of robots: Jeff is an agile fish-like robot with various pressure and magnetic sensors for obstacle detection, avoidance, and navigation.  The swarm also featured 20 saucer-shaped Lily robots that randomly search for objects while communicating with each other using blue-LED lights.  The...

The US Navy recently announced that it will make more use of submarine drones, contracting with marine technology developer Teledyne Benthos to re-purpose the Slocum Glider as an instrument used for military activity. The contract is worth $203.7M.   If you haven’t heard of it yet, here is what the Slocum Glider is: a 5 foot-long autonomous underwater vehicle capable of moving to specific locations and descending to depths of 4,000 feet. It is driven by variable buoyancy, and it can move both horizontally and vertically.   The Slocum Glider can be programmed to patrol for weeks at a time, collecting data on its environment, surfacing to transmit to shore while downloading new instructions at regular intervals. Compared to traditional methods, the drones have a relative small cost: the need for personnel and infrastructure is reduced to its minimum and the vehicle is able to work around the clock and around the calendar. It works very well: in November 2012, an auto...

Bio-inspired maritime robotics is an emerging field gaining significant traction. Two examples the U.S. Navy has funded include  Boston Engineering's Bioswimmer,  and the odd robotic jellyfish,  Cyro .  Both of these projects look clumsy compared to a robotic fish recently developed by a consortium of Polish researchers from the Technical University of Krakow, the marine technology firm  FORKOS, and the Polish Naval Academy.  The group's CyberRyba ("Cyber-fish") autonomous underwater vehicle can move along a preset route, but will eventually be able to autonomously  avoid obstacles and log data from a  sonar or video camera. The carp-like CyberRyba's uncanny realistic movement is aided by an articulating body and tail as well as independently moving pectoral fins allowing it to hover in place. The ultimate goal of the research is to support the European Defence Agency's "Swarm of Biomimetic Underwater Vehicles for Underwater ISR" (SABUVIS) pr...

Bio-inspired robotics research continues to pave the way for future military applications.  In 2012, researchers proved that Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), could perform simple swarming functions.   This blog discussed that technology and its implications for naval use in a post here . CoCoRo   (Collective Cognitive Robots) is a consortium of European universities led by the Artificial Life AL at the Department of Zoology at the Karl-Franzens-University Graz engaged in developing autonomous swarms of underwater vehicles to monitor, search, and explore the underwater realm.   The "Jeff" AUV production line. As seen in the above video, their AUVs demonstrate novel underwater communications methods and simple swarming behavior.  CoCoRo is currently building 20 copies of its newer AUV, "Jeff," which can maneuver rapidly underwater and dock to a floating surface station for battery recharging and da...

The mystique of Navy SEALs has been heavily celebrated in the media and films due to recent real world exploits.  Yet Naval Special Warfare (NSW) sailors have been heavily engaged in combat operations for more than eleven consecutive years.  Warfare is still a decidely human endeavor, and America's naval special warriors are quick to embrace the truth that "humans are more important than hardware." Nevertheless, today's SEALs, Special Warfare Combat Crewmen, and other supporting personnel in the NSW community have benefited greatly from technology, which increasingly includes unmanned systems. Two primary realizations within the NSW community drove the rapid introduction of UAVs for combat operations in Southwest and Central Asia.  The first realization was that even the best shooters in the world were ineffective if they were unable to locate their targets.  Simply, UAVs are a force multiplier for SEALs and enable an exponential increase in the...

Experimentation with large numbers of low cost quadrotors operating in swarms has produced some interesting results, including potential for future military applications.  Now some researchers in Germany are working to transition these concepts to the underwater realm, building autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that behave like fish in a school.  A team at the University of Luebeck's Institute of Computer Engineering has developed an affordable AUV designed for environmental surveys called MONitoring System and Underwater Navigation Robot (MONSUN ) II. MONSUN II is a 4 kilogram AUV equipped with a series of vertical and horizontal thrusters to maneuver and maintain orientation.  The vehicle maintains its position relative to other AUVs in the school using infrared sensors and a nose camera with a form of computer image recognition called "blob detection."  The swarming technology demonstrat...

As long as physical limitations constrain the range and endurance of unmanned air, surface, and sub-surface vehicles, they will need to operate in conjunction with larger platforms.  These motherships serve a wide variety of functions besides simply transporting, launching, and recovering unmanned vehicles.  They maintain and repair the drones, recharge or refuel their propulsion sytems, and they enable data collected from unmanned sensors to be downloaded, analyzed, and disseminated beyond the line-of-sight.  Characterizing the evolution of these unmanned vehicle motherships can help extrapolate how they might be used in the future. Generation I - Ad hoc platforms: This category includes legacy naval vessels ranging in size from patrol craft (US SOCOM's MK V at right, with ScanEagle) to large amphibious ships, and likely some day, aircraft carriers.  Minesweeping and hunting vessels have carried remotely opera...