Making AUVs Truly Autonomous

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.