A reconfigurable mission control system for underwater vehicles

This paper describes the mission control software used in the LSTS/FEUP underwater vehicles. This software follows the guidelines of the generalized vehicle architecture, adapts the original idea to encompass the current application requirements and constitutes a first implementation. The work is focused on the design and implementation of an application that can be easily adapted to different vehicle configurations or even to different vehicles. One of the desired goals was to enhance software reusability and to establish a development environment that allows developers with a minimal knowledge of coding details to upgrade the application. To assist this purpose, a CASE tool, which provides modern software development techniques, was used. A simulation environment was also developed whose purpose is to test the applications and to detect possible malfunctions before they occur during mission execution.