Mission Assurance for Autonomous Undersea Vehicles

Abstract

Autonomous vehicles are all but inevitable, and assurance that they will behave safely with respect to passengers, as well as bystanders incidentally exposed to them, is moving forward, albeit slowly. The state of the art often involves stopping the vehicle, perhaps after diverting it to a nearby safe place. While this is good news, it does not fully realize the benefits of autonomy. Autonomous vehicles are built for a purpose; call it a mission. Being able to perform the mission, or part of it, while experiencing faults (or cyber-attack) should be a factor in determining the vehicle's suitability for the mission. This paper explores the state of the art in achieving autonomous mission assurance in the context of autonomous undersea vehicles (AUVs). It identifies gaps in the literature and proposes a novel plan to address certain gaps.