Making AUVs Truly Autonomous

TLDR

Autonomous underwater vehicles are increasingly adopted as safe, cost‑effective alternatives to manned or remotely controlled systems, yet their autonomy remains limited, especially in challenging environments such as under‑ice operations where failure rates are high. The study aims to de‑risk long‑endurance autonomous operations in unknown areas, enabling extended missions of weeks. The authors review ongoing AUV research at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment aimed at achieving this goal.

Abstract

Autonomous underwater vehicles are gaining acceptance in a number of applications and countries, as a safe, cost-effective and reliable alternative to manned or remotely controlled systems. However, the actual autonomy of these vehicles is limited in many ways, restricting their potential uses. Further advances in AUV autonomy will enable new operations, such as very long endurance missions (weeks), and operations in unknown areas. While some experimentation is already taking place with e.g. under ice operations, the chance of failure is unacceptably high for many potential users. De-risking of long-endurance autonomous operations in unknown areas is thus an important goal for the AUV community. This paper gives an overview of the AUV research being carried out towards this end at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment.