A computer simulation study of rule-based control of an autonomous underwater vehicle

Abstract

Man has an ever-increasing desire for machines to do his work for him. Unmanned vehicles that perform routine or hazardous tasks are receiving a great deal of attention. Vehicles for unmanned submersible applications are becoming more feasible as strides are made in very large scale integration of computer hardware. This work focuses on development of algorithms and ideas for the computer control of military Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). Both a Lisp machine and a graphics workstation, communicating via an Ethernet network, were used in this thesis to develop AUV simulator software. The emphasis has been placed on developing a computer graphic simulation of the control panel of an AUV and on a family of programs that define AUV missions. An AUV mission is a complete software plan designed to control an AUV as it executes the steps to achieve some goal or objective. AUV missions are executed by this simulator in a fully autonomous mode once certain mission parameters are supplied by a human user.