Engineering Commons^™

Test And Evaluation Model For Midwater Docking Of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, Parker Baillon

Theses and Dissertations

This research created a Test and Evaluation (T&E) model for midwater Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) capture. The creation of this model will allow for a better assessment of the feasibility of midwater AUV capture. To achieve this, the T&E model was exposed to various flow conditions to assess stability. Capturing an AUV in midwater, the area below the wave-affected zone to the sea floor, has many benefits for an AUV and its mission. AUVs basing missions from a midwater dock will not be affected by wave motions. A midwater dock can be transported to any mission site and deployed with …

Elastic Sensing Skin For Monitoring Of Concrete Structures, Emmanuel Abiodun Ogunniyi

Theses and Dissertations

Soft elastomeric capacitors (SECs) are emerging as potential low-cost solutions for monitoring cracks and strains in concrete infrastructure, a crucial aspect of structural health monitoring. Effective long-term monitoring of civil infrastructure can reduce the risk of structural failures and potentially reduce the cost and frequency of inspections. However, deploying structural health monitoring (SHM) technologies for bridge monitoring is expensive, especially long-term, due to the density of sensors required to detect, localize, and quantify cracks. Previous research on soft elastomeric capacitors (SEC) has shown their viability for low-cost monitoring of cracks in transportation infrastructure. However, when deployed on concrete for strain …

Feasibility Analysis Of A Wave Powered Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, Yingchen Yang, Erick Martinez

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

An autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) powered by renewable energy would enable it to extend endurance and forward presence with no logistics tail for fuel. A wave powered concept AUV is proposed and analyzed for this purpose. The AUV is in a torpedo shape and employs a fully hull-encapsulated mass-spring-damper system as its power take-off (PTO) unit. While in the recharging mode, the AUV surfaces and converts wave energy for electricity. Considering the AUV of a common size, our analysis indicates that resonance of the AUV and/or its PTO, to be excited by ocean waves, becomes impossible in typical ocean conditions. …

Compensation For Auv’S Navigation Algorithm Based On Virtual Noise Model, Menglong Cao, Feifei Li, Xintao Liu

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: The simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) of Autonomous underwater robot (AUV) is the key technology to realize the auto navigation for robot in the unknown environment of underwater, and it is one of the hot topics in the field of robotics research. In the framework of autonomous underwater robot SLAM, extended kalman filter (EKF) was applied to achieve the SLAM. For the model linearization errors and unknown noise statistics, EKF algorithm was used based on virtual noise compensation technology. This method could make the unknown model error into the virtual noise, and use the noise statistical to estimate the …

The Vessel For Autonomous Research Underwater (The Varuna), Tyler Briles, Shae Connor, Erin Guthrie, Anthony Jackson, Madeleine Peauroi

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

Humans are intimately connected to the Earth’s ocean, and yet only 5% of it has been explored. Learning more about marine life and ocean chemistry can only improve our stewardship efforts. The addition of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle to the Santa Clara University Robotic Systems Laboratory’s collection of marine robots will contribute to this quest for knowledge. It will assist researchers by providing a low-cost, easy-to-use, portable, reliable, and safe alternative to operator-controlled vehicles. This report describes our motivations for this project, the decisions we made in the design and manufacturing of the VARUNA, and tradeoff analyses of possible options. …

A Comparative Study Of Feature Detection Methods For Auv Localization, Andrew Y. Kim

Master's Theses

Underwater localization is a difficult task when it comes to making the system autonomous due to the unpredictable environment. The fact that radio signals such as GPS cannot be transmitted through water makes autonomous movement and localization underwater even more challenging. One specific method that is widely used for autonomous underwater navigation applications is Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), a technique in which a map is created and updated while localizing the vehicle within the map. In SLAM, feature detection is used in landmark extraction and data association by examining each pixel and differentiating landmarks pixels from those of the …

Towards Autonomous Localization Of An Underwater Drone, Nathan Sfard

Master's Theses

Autonomous vehicle navigation is a complex and challenging task. Land and aerial vehicles often use highly accurate GPS sensors to localize themselves in their environments. These sensors are ineffective in underwater environments due to signal attenuation. Autonomous underwater vehicles utilize one or more of the following approaches for successful localization and navigation: inertial/dead-reckoning, acoustic signals, and geophysical data. This thesis examines autonomous localization in a simulated environment for an OpenROV Underwater Drone using a Kalman Filter. This filter performs state estimation for a dead reckoning system exhibiting an additive error in location measurements. We evaluate the accuracy of this Kalman …

Hydromodus: An Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, Alex Kost, Anu Mahinkanda, Jordan Read

Electrical Engineering

Hydromodus is a student-led multidisciplinary project conceived by Jordan Read designed to provide a low-cost modular hardware and software solution for researchers and scientists. For the scope of the Senior Project class, it is designed to be a baited remote underwater vehicle (BRUV), but the platform is highly modifiable and open-source.

Exploring Trade-Offs In Auv Controller Design For Shark Tracking, Louis James Bertsch Iv

Master's Theses

This thesis explores the use of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) to track and pursue a tagged shark through the water. A controller was designed to take bearing and range to the shark tag and then control the AUV to pursue it.

First, the ability of a particle filter to provide an accurate estimation of the location of the shark relative to the AUV is explored. Second, the ability of the AUV to follow the shark's path through the water is shown. This ability allows for localized environmental sampling of the shark's preferred path. Third, various path weightings are used …

Intelligent Planning And Assimilation Of Auv-Obtained Measurements Within A Roms-Based Ocean Modeling System, Benjamin J. Davini

Master's Theses

Efforts to learn more about the oceans that surround us have increased dramatically as the technological ability to do so grows. Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are one such technological advance. They allow for rapid deployment and can gather data quickly in places and ways that traditional measurement systems (bouys, profilers, etc.) cannot. A ROMS-based data assimilation method was developed that intelligently plans for and integrates AUV measurements with the goal of minimizing model standard deviation. An algorithm developed for this system is first described that optimizes paths for AUVs that seeks to improve the model by gathering data in high-interest …

Ultrasonic Shark-Tag Locator System For Iver2 Auv, Nathaniel Garcia

Computer Engineering

The purpose of this project is to develop a system for tracking an ultrasonic underwater transmitter that can be integrated into an IVER2 AUV to allow it to follow and monitor tagged sharks in the ocean for scientific research.

The system consists of a four main components including a shark-tag, two hydrophones, a filter/amplifier & threshold detector circuit, and a microcontroller.

This project, while not completing field testing and integration with the IVER2, is a proof of concept of a system that utilizes passive sonar to determine a bearing from the system to a shark-tag transmitter. Additionally, it devised several …

Design Of A Gas Tight Water Sampler For Auv Operations, Christopher Roman, R. Camilli

Christopher N. Roman

This paper presents the design and preliminary test results for a small gas tight water sampler intended to work on scientific AUVs. In recent years AUVs have developed into reliable platforms capable of carrying a wide variety of environmental sensors for in-situ chemical measurements. Physical sample collection however remains difficult, due to the combination of space, power and complexity constraints inherent in working with autonomous platforms. The AUV sampler is a small (12 cm times 85 cm) cylindrical package designed to collect eight 20 ml gas tight volumes of water, with each sample maintained at high pressure to depths of …

Estimation Of Error In Large Area Underwater Photomosaics Using Vehicle Navigation Data, C. Roman, H. Singh

Christopher N. Roman

Creating geometrically accurate photomosaics of underwater sites using images collected from an AUV or ROV is a difficult task due to dimensional errors which grow as a function of 3D image distortion and the mosaicking process. Although photomosiacs are accurate locally their utility for accurately representing a large survey area is jeopardized by this error growth. Evaluating the error in a mosaic is the first step in creating globally accurate photomosaics of an unstructured environment with bounded error. Using vehicle navigation data and sensor offsets it is possible to estimate the error present in large area photomosaics independent of the …

A New Autonomous Underwater Vehicle For Imaging Research, C. Roman, O. Pizarro, R. Eustice, H. Singh

Christopher N. Roman

Currently, unmanned underwater vehicles either tend to be cumbersome and complex to run, or operationally simple, but not quite suitable platforms for deep water imaging. This paper presents an alternative design in the form of a new low cost and easier to use autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) for imaging research. The objective of the vehicle is to serve as a readily available and operationally simple tool that allows rapid testing of imaging algorithms in areas such as photomosaicking, 3D image reconstruction from a single camera, image based navigation, and multi-sensor fusion of bathymetry and optical data. These are all current …