Advanced autonomy architecture for maritime applications AVA

Creating autonomy for maritime vehicles that allows multiple developers and users to quickly integrate and develop capabilities is a difficult process. Multiple examples of autonomy exist; however, creating an environment that is modular and expandable is not often a goal of many autonomous systems. This work presents an advanced Autonomous Vehicle Architecture (AVA) for maritime systems that was created to meet the Navy's standards of a Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) system. AVA sets out to allow fast integration into a vehicle framework while also allowing developers to quickly create missions, high-level tasks, and low-level behaviors for a mission. This paper also provides details on an in-water demonstration of AVA used for a search-classify-map mission.