Underwater exploration

Autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) missions are generally of a multi-tasked nature, i.e., there are usually several criteria which need to be met concurrently during the course of a mission. An example is the bottom altitude tracking mission proposed by the University of South Florida. They have developed a bottom classification and albedance package (BCAP) which will be used to record data to ground-truth oceanographic satellites. Two criteria needed for this mission are vehicle safety and motion stability of the recording sensors. This thesis will respectively compare the results of three bottom altitude tracking controllers: a linear modification of an existing depth controller, a TSK fuzzy logic controller, and a behavior based decision controller. Aspects analyzed for meeting the criteria were the ability of the auv to avoid collisions with bottom, the ability of the auv to maintain a desired altitude above the sea floor, and the ability of the auv to keep the amount of blur in a picture taken by a downward looking camera under one pixel. From simulation and real world testing, final results indicate the behavioral based decision controller was proven to be the most robust and the only controller tested to be able to handle multi-criteria.

The purpose of the thesis is to investigate a multi-aspect reflection technique to generate 3D images of buried cylinders using the Buried Object Scanning Sonar (BOSS). Target imagery is constructed using a sequence of acoustic echoes generated as the sonar approaches and passes the buried target. However, for the sake of simplicity, the influence of the sediment on the scattering field will not be considered. This thesis investigates the multi-aspect technique by generating synthetic images of cylindrical targets to determine both the best method and the sonar parameters for reconstructing the shape of an elastic cylinder. Recommendations for deploying BOSS-252 and setting sonar parameters are provided based on quantitative measurements of the simulated images of cylindrical targets.