SUNFISH®: A human-portable exploration AUV for complex 3D environments

Stone Aerospace is developing the SUNFISH
^®
autonomous underwater vehicle which addresses many of the challenges of remote, autonomous exploration in unstructured environments. The AUV was designed to be a highly-capable platform for operating in a wide variety of complex 3D spaces, ranging from man-made (e.g. piers or harbors) to natural (e.g. reefs or caves). SUNFISH is a person-portable, 6-DOF hovering vehicle with built-in precision navigation and control, multibeam mapping, imaging, and CTD capabilities. Building on this base functionality7, we have developed high-level capabilities for performing simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), exploration, path planning, and precision docking. This paper describes these capabilities, and presents a demonstration in the unstructured labyrinthine 3D environment of Peacock Springs in northern Florida, USA. SUNFISH demonstrated the capability to autonomously explore this environment, creating a real-time map with which it navigated through the complex. SUNFISH penetrated 120 m into the caves and was able to autonomously find its way back to the deployment location. The capabilities developed for SUNFISH also have direct application to general inspection, monitoring, and survey tasks, as well as providing a basis for the types of autonomous vehicles that will explore where humans cannot go.