Shared autonomy for low–cost underwater vehicles

Lawrance, Nicholas; DeBortoli, Robert; Jones, Dylan; McCammon, Seth; Milliken, Lauren; Nicolai, Austin; Somers, Thane; Hollinger, Geoffrey

doi:10.1002/rob.21835

Shared autonomy for low–cost underwater vehicles

Journal Article · Sat Oct 27 00:00:00 EDT 2018 · Journal of Field Robotics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/rob.21835· OSTI ID:2476823

^[1]; DeBortoli, Robert ^[2]; ^[2]; McCammon, Seth ^[2]; Milliken, Lauren ^[2]; ^[2]; Somers, Thane ^[2]; Hollinger, Geoffrey ^[2]

ETH Zürich (Switzerland); Oregon State University
Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR (United States)

This field report presents an overview of the development and testing of a semi-autonomous underwater vehicle (sAUV). The work presented here is aimed at bridging the gap between current remotely operated vehicles and autonomous research platforms by developing shared autonomy capabilities for low-cost underwater vehicles. We use commercially available components and open-source software interfaces to provide a wider range of capabilities for underwater autonomy research at a lower cost than previously available systems. We describe the overall structure of the system, discuss its capabilities, and provide results demonstrating system performance. We place particular emphasis on shared autonomy, where a human operator is assisted in controlling an underwater tethered vehicle. We present three capabilities developed for the sAUV: (a) an assisted control mode that provides a variable level of assistance using an on-line estimate of user skill level, (b) a planner to generate paths that avoid tether entanglement, and (c) a sonar processing algorithm that identifies informative sonar images for selecting features for 3D scene reconstruction. Here, the vehicle has been deployed on five off-shore and near-shore marine field deployments since 2015, and this report includes selected results from four of those trials to demonstrate the capabilities and limitations of the sAUV system.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Water Power Technologies Office

Grant/Contract Number:: EE0006816

OSTI ID:: 2476823

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1613398

Journal Information:: Journal of Field Robotics, Journal Name: Journal of Field Robotics Journal Issue: 3 Vol. 36; ISSN 1556-4959

Publisher:: WileyCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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