On-line damage detection for autonomous underwater vehicles

The advent of the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) greatly improved our ability to explore and understand the world in which we live, but these vehicles were always limited by cables that tethered them to a support facility. Now, with the advent of practical autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) the cord can be cut, allowing these robot sentinels to wander the oceans at will. The only limitations on the missions these robots will be able to perform are the available power supply, on-board intelligence and the imagination of the user. If these vehicles will be operating for weeks or even months at a time, a prime concern will be the ability of the vehicle to monitor its own health. This paper seeks to address this problem through the development of a system that can monitor the health of any onboard system.