Scientific Challenges and Present Capabilities in Underwater Robotic Vehicle Design and Navigation for Oceanographic Exploration Under-Ice

Barker, Laughlin D. L.; Jakuba, Michael V.; Bowen, A.; German, Christopher R.; Maksym, Ted; Mayer, Larry A.; Boetius, Antje; Dutrieux, Pierre; Whitcomb, Louis L.

doi:10.3390/rs12162588

Cited by 33 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 135 publications

(169 reference statements)

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“…For an extensive review of the scientific motivation and challenges, development, and use of underwater robotic vehicles designed for use in ice-covered waters, with special attention paid to the navigation systems employed for under-ice deployments, the reader is directed to [2]. This paper reviews scientific needs for routine access under fixed and moving ice by underwater robotic vehicles are reviewed in the contexts of geology and geophysics, biology, sea ice and climate, ice shelves, and seafloor mapping.…”

Section: Background and Literature Review: Under-ice Navigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance Analysis of Ice-Relative Upward-Looking Doppler Navigation of Underwater Vehicles Beneath Moving Sea Ice

Barker

Whitcomb

2021

JMSE

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This paper addresses the problem of ice-relative underwater robotic vehicle navigation relative to moving or stationary contiguous sea ice. A review of previously-reported under-ice navigation methods is given, as well as motivation for the use of under-ice robotic vehicles with precision navigation capabilities. We then describe our proposed approach, which employs two or more satellite navigation beacons atop the sea ice along with other precision vehicle and ship mounted navigation sensors to estimate vehicle, ice, and ship states by means of an Extended Kalman Filter. A performances sensitivity analysis for a simulated 7.7 km under ice survey is reported. The number and the location of ice deployed satellite beacons, rotational and translational ice velocity, and separation of ship-based acoustic range sensors are varied, and their effects on estimate error and uncertainty are examined. Results suggest that increasing the number and/or separation of ice-deployed satellite beacons reduces estimate uncertainty, whereas increasing separation of ship-based acoustic range sensors has little impact on estimate uncertainty. Decreasing ice velocity is also correlated with reduced estimate uncertainty. Our analysis suggests that the proposed method is feasible and can offer scientifically useful navigation accuracy over a range of operating conditions.

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Section: Background and Literature Review: Under-ice Navigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance Analysis of Ice-Relative Upward-Looking Doppler Navigation of Underwater Vehicles Beneath Moving Sea Ice

Barker

Whitcomb

2021

JMSE

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“…Several recent works have considered applying autonomous mobile robots for remote sensing and exploration of unknown and/or dangerous environments [1][2][3]. Unknown environment exploration is a standard problem in mobile robotics and is fundamental for a lot of applications.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…20 × 20 map, 0.5 resolution, tether length 40, 50-60 obstacles of radius up to 0.5. Tether base is at[1,1], and the field of view is set to 4.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Tangle-Free Exploration with a Tethered Mobile Robot

Shapovalov

Pereira

2020

Remote Sensing

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Exploration and remote sensing with mobile robots is a well known field of research, but current solutions cannot be directly applied for tethered robots. In some applications, tethers may be very important to provide power or allow communication with the robot. This paper presents an exploration algorithm that guarantees complete exploration of arbitrary environments within the length constraint of the tether, while keeping the tether tangle-free at all times. While we also propose a generalized algorithm that can be used with several exploration strategies, our implementation uses a modified frontier-based exploration approach, where the robot chooses its next goal in the frontier between explored and unexplored regions of the environment. The basic idea of the algorithm is to keep an estimate of the tether configuration, including length and homotopy, and decide the next robot path based on the difference between the current tether length and the shortest tether length at the next goal position. Our algorithm is provable correct and was tested and evaluated using both simulations and real-world experiments.

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“…The Arctic is one of the most sensitive regions to anthropogenic climate change, in part due to the feedback mechanism of water absorbing a greater proportion of the sun's heat than ice does. 5 Permafrost melt threatens existing Arctic social, military, and commercial infrastructure 6 while also destabilizing the region's role in the global carbon cycle, from carbon sink to 4 Schmidt et al, "Acoustic Communication and Navigation in the New Arctic -A Model Case for Environmental Adaptation". 5 Chapin et al, "Role of Land-Surface Changes in Arctic Summer Warming".…”

Section: A New Blue Arcticmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…5 Permafrost melt threatens existing Arctic social, military, and commercial infrastructure 6 while also destabilizing the region's role in the global carbon cycle, from carbon sink to 4 Schmidt et al, "Acoustic Communication and Navigation in the New Arctic -A Model Case for Environmental Adaptation". 5 Chapin et al, "Role of Land-Surface Changes in Arctic Summer Warming". 6 Khurshudyan et al, An oil spill in Russia's Arctic exposes problems in Moscow's big plans for the Far North.…”

Section: A New Blue Arcticmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Virtual Ocean framework for environmentally adaptive, embedded acoustic navigation on autonomous underwater vehicles

Bhatt¹

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Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are an increasingly capable robotic platform, with embedded acoustic sensing to facilitate navigation, communication, and collaboration. The global positioning system (GPS), ubiquitous for air- and terrestrial-based drones, cannot position a submerged AUV. Current methods for acoustic underwater navigation employ a deterministic sound speed to convert recorded travel time into range. In acoustically complex propagation environments, however, accurate navigation is predicated on how the sound speed structure affects propagation. The Arctic’s Beaufort Gyre provides an excellent case study for this relationship via the Beaufort Lens, a recently observed influx of warm Pacific water that forms a widespread yet variable sound speed lens throughout the gyre. At short ranges, the lens intensifies multipath propagation and creates a dramatic shadow zone, deteriorating acoustic communication and navigation performance. The Arctic also poses the additional operational challenge of an ice-covered, GPSdenied environment. This dissertation demonstrates a framework for a physics-based, model-aided, real-time conversion of recorded travel time into range—the first of its kind—which was essential to the successful AUV deployment and recovery in the Beaufort Sea, in March 2020. There are three nominal steps. First, we investigate the spatio-temporal variability of the Beaufort Lens. Second, we design a human-in-the-loop graphical decision-making framework to encode desired sound speed profile information into a lightweight, digital acoustic message for onboard navigation and communication. Lastly, we embed a stochastic, ray-based prediction of the group velocity as a function of extrapolated source and receiver locations. This framework is further validated by transmissions among GPS-aided modem buoys and improved upon to rival GPS accuracy and surpass GPS precision. The Arctic is one of the most sensitive regions to climate change, and as warmer surface temperatures and shrinking sea ice extent continue to deviate from historical conditions, the region will become more accessible and navigable. Underwater robotic platforms to monitor these environmental changes, along with the inevitable rise in human traffic related to trade, fishing, tourism, and military activity, are paramount to coupling national security with international climate security.

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Scientific Challenges and Present Capabilities in Underwater Robotic Vehicle Design and Navigation for Oceanographic Exploration Under-Ice

Cited by 33 publications

References 135 publications

Performance Analysis of Ice-Relative Upward-Looking Doppler Navigation of Underwater Vehicles Beneath Moving Sea Ice

Performance Analysis of Ice-Relative Upward-Looking Doppler Navigation of Underwater Vehicles Beneath Moving Sea Ice

Tangle-Free Exploration with a Tethered Mobile Robot

A Virtual Ocean framework for environmentally adaptive, embedded acoustic navigation on autonomous underwater vehicles

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