Unified command and control for heterogeneous marine sensing networks

Successful command and control (C2) of autonomous vehicles poses challenges that are unique to the marine environment, primarily highly restrictive acoustic communications throughput. To address this, the Unified C2 architecture presented here uses a highly compressed short message encoding scheme (Dynamic Compact Control Language or DCCL) to transfer commands and receive vehicle status. DCCL is readily reconfigurable to provide the flexibility needed to change commands on short notice. Furthermore, operation of multiple types of vehicles requires a C2 architecture that is both scalable and flexible to differences among platform hardware and abilities. The Unified C2 architecture uses the MOOS-IvP autonomy system to act as a “backseat driver” of the vehicle. This provides a uniform interface to the control system on all the vehicles. Also, a hierarchical configuration system is used to allow single changes in configuration to propagate to all vehicles in operation. Status data from all vehicles are displayed visually using Google Earth, which also allows a rapid meshing of data from other sources (sensors, automatic identification system, radar, satellites) from within, as well as outside of, the MOOS-IvP architecture. Results are presented throughout from the CCLNET08, SQUINT08, GLINT08, GLINT09, SWAMSI09, and DURIP09 experiments involving robotic marine autonomous surface craft (ASCs) and Bluefin, OceanServer, and NATO Undersea Research Centre (NURC) autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).United States. Office of Naval Research (Grant N00014-1-08-1-0013)United States. Office of Naval Research (Grant N00014-1-08-1-0011

Advances in integrating autonomy with acoustic communications for intelligent networks of marine robots

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 2013Autonomous marine vehicles are increasingly used in clusters for an array of oceanographic tasks. The effectiveness of this collaboration is often limited by communications: throughput, latency, and ease of reconfiguration. This thesis argues that improved communication on intelligent marine robotic agents can be gained from acting on knowledge gained by improved awareness of the physical acoustic link and higher network layers by the AUV’s decision making software. This thesis presents a modular acoustic networking framework, realized through a C++ library called goby-acomms, to provide collaborating underwater vehicles with an efficient short-range single-hop network. goby-acomms is comprised of four components that provide: 1) losslessly compressed encoding of short messages; 2) a set of message queues that dynamically prioritize messages based both on overall importance and time sensitivity; 3) Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) Medium Access Control (MAC) with automatic discovery; and 4) an abstract acoustic modem driver. Building on this networking framework, two approaches that use the vehicle’s “intelligence” to improve communications are presented. The first is a “non-disruptive” approach which is a novel technique for using state observers in conjunction with an entropy source encoder to enable highly compressed telemetry of autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) position vectors. This system was analyzed on experimental data and implemented on a fielded vehicle. Using an adaptive probability distribution in combination with either of two state observer models, greater than 90% compression, relative to a 32-bit integer baseline, was achieved. The second approach is “disruptive,” as it changes the vehicle’s course to effect an improvement in the communications channel. A hybrid data- and model-based autonomous environmental adaptation framework is presented which allows autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) with acoustic sensors to follow a path which optimizes their ability to maintain connectivity with an acoustic contact for optimal sensing or communication.I wish to acknowledge the sponsors of this research for their generous support of my tuition, stipend, and research: the WHOI/MIT Joint Program, the MIT Presidential Fellowship, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) # N00014-08-1-0011, # N00014-08-1-0013, and the ONR PlusNet Program Graduate Fellowship, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) (Deep Sea Operations: Applied Physical Sciences (APS) Award # APS 11-15 3352-006, APS 11-15-3352-215 ST 2.6 and 2.7

Interoperability Among Unmanned Maritime Vehicles: Review and First In-field Experimentation

Complex maritime missions, both above and below the surface, have traditionally been carried out by manned surface ships and submarines equipped with advanced sensor systems. Unmanned Maritime Vehicles (UMVs) are increasingly demonstrating their potential for improving existing naval capabilities due to their rapid deployability, easy scalability, and high reconfigurability, offering a reduction in both operational time and cost. In addition, they mitigate the risk to personnel by leaving the man far-from-the-risk but in-the-loop of decision making. In the long-term, a clear interoperability framework between unmanned systems, human operators, and legacy platforms will be crucial for effective joint operations planning and execution. However, the present multi-vendor multi-protocol solutions in multi-domain UMVs activities are hard to interoperate without common mission control interfaces and communication protocol schemes. Furthermore, the underwater domain presents significant challenges that cannot be satisfied with the solutions developed for terrestrial networks. In this paper, the interoperability topic is discussed blending a review of the technological growth from 2000 onwards with recent authors' in-field experience; finally, important research directions for the future are given. Within the broad framework of interoperability in general, the paper focuses on the aspect of interoperability among UMVs not neglecting the role of the human operator in the loop. The picture emerging from the review demonstrates that interoperability is currently receiving a high level of attention with a great and diverse deal of effort. Besides, the manuscript describes the experience from a sea trial exercise, where interoperability has been demonstrated by integrating heterogeneous autonomous UMVs into the NATO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) network, using different robotic middlewares and acoustic modem technologies to implement a multistatic active sonar system. A perspective for the interoperability in marine robotics missions emerges in the paper, through a discussion of current capabilities, in-field experience and future advanced technologies unique to UMVs. Nonetheless, their application spread is slowed down by the lack of human confidence. In fact, an interoperable system-of-systems of autonomous UMVs will require operators involved only at a supervisory level. As trust develops, endorsed by stable and mature interoperability, human monitoring will be diminished to exploit the tremendous potential of fully autonomous UMVs

A Framework for Collaborative Multi-task, Multi-robot Missions

Robotics is a transformative technology that will empower our civilization for a new scale of human endeavors. Massive scale is only possible through the collaboration of individual or groups of robots. Collaboration allows specialization, meaning a multirobot system may accommodate heterogeneous platforms including human partners. This work develops a unified control architecture for collaborative missions comprised of multiple, multi-robot tasks. Using kinematic equations and Jacobian matrices, the system states are transformed into alternative control spaces which are more useful for the designer or more convenient for the operator. The architecture allows multiple tasks to be combined, composing tightly coordinated missions. Using this approach, the designer is able to compensate for non-ideal behavior in the appropriate space using whatever control scheme they choose. This work presents a general design methodology, including analysis techniques for relevant control metrics like stability, responsiveness, and disturbance rejection, which were missing in prior work. Multiple tasks may be combined into a collaborative mission. The unified motion control architecture merges the control space components for each task into a concise federated system to facilitate analysis and implementation. The task coordination function defines task commands as functions of mission commands and state values to create explicit closed-loop collaboration. This work presents analysis techniques to understand the effects of cross-coupling tasks. This work analyzes system stability for the particular control architecture and identifies an explicit condition to ensure stable switching when reallocating robots. We are unaware of any other automated control architectures that address large-scale collaborative systems composed of task-oriented multi-robot coalitions where relative spatial control is critical to mission performance. This architecture and methodology have been validated in experiments and in simulations, repeating earlier work and exploring new scenarios and. It can perform large-scale, complex missions via a rigorous design methodology

Adaptable underwater networks: The relation between autonomy and communications

This paper discusses requirements for autonomy and communications in maritime environments through two use cases which are sourced from military scenarios: Mine Counter Measures (MCM) and Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW). To address these requirements, this work proposes a service-oriented architecture that breaks the typical boundaries between the autonomy and the communications stacks. An initial version of the architecture has been implemented and its deployment during a field trial done in January 2019 is reported. The paper discusses the achieved results in terms of system flexibility and ability to address the MCM and ASW requirements

University of Maine Connection to the vBNS

This award is made under the high performance connections portion of ANIR\u27s Connections to the Internet announcement, NSF 96-64. It provides partial support for two years for a DS-3 connection to the vBNS. Applications include projects in artificial intelligence and underwater vehicle research, wood science anf forest engineering, tribology, ceramic film characterization, insect population dynamics, digital libraries, conflict and violence, and oceanography. Collaborating institutions include the Naval Postgraduate School; Pennsylvania State University; University of New Hampshire; Brookhaven, Argonne and Oak Ridge National Labs; Naval Research Lab; University of Illinois; Naval Undersea Weapons Center; University of California - Santa Barbara; Woods Hole; Dartmouth; Bedford Institute of Oceanography; several European institutions; Oregon State University; University of Rhode Island; and Goddard Space Flight Center. For additional information: http://homeland.maine.edu

An overview of emergency communication networks

In recent years, major natural disasters and public safety accidents have frequently occurred worldwide. In order to deal with various disasters and accidents using rapidly deployable, reliable, efficient, and stable emergency communication networks, all countries in the world are strengthening and improving emergency communication network construction and related technology research. Motivated by these situations, in this paper, we provide a state-of-the-art survey of the current situation and development of emergency communication networks. In this detailed investigation, our primary focus is the extensive discussion of emergency communication network technology, including satellite networks, ad hoc networks, cellular networks, and wireless private networks. Then, we explore and analyze the networks currently applied in emergency rescue, such as the 370M narrowband private network, broadband cluster network, and 5G constellation plan. We propose a broadband-narrowband integrated emergency communication network to provide an effective solution for visual dispatch of emergency rescue services. The main findings derived from the comprehensive survey on the emergency communication network are then summarized, and possible research challenges are noted. Lastly, we complete this survey by shedding new light on future directions for the emergency communication network. In the future, the emergency network will develop in the direction of intelligence, integration, popularization, and lower cost, and space-air-ground-sea integrated networks. This survey provides a reference basis for the construction of networks to mitigate major natural disasters and public safety accidents

Reference Model for Interoperability of Autonomous Systems

This thesis proposes a reference model to describe the components of an Un-manned Air, Ground, Surface, or Underwater System (UxS), and the use of a single Interoperability Building Block to command, control, and get feedback from such vehicles. The importance and advantages of such a reference model, with a standard nomenclature and taxonomy, is shown. We overview the concepts of interoperability and some efforts to achieve common refer-ence models in other areas. We then present an overview of existing un-manned systems, their history, characteristics, classification, and missions. The concept of Interoperability Building Blocks (IBB) is introduced to describe standards, protocols, data models, and frameworks, and a large set of these are analyzed. A new and powerful reference model for UxS, named RAMP, is proposed, that describes the various components that a UxS may have. It is a hierarchical model with four levels, that describes the vehicle components, the datalink, and the ground segment. The reference model is validated by showing how it can be applied in various projects the author worked on. An example is given on how a single standard was capable of controlling a set of heterogeneous UAVs, USVs, and UGVs