NRI: FND: Extending Autonomy in Seemingly Sensory-Denied Environments Applied to Underwater Robots

Many coastal communities in the U.S. are densely populated and highly urbanized, presenting critical locations for assessing the effects of urbanization and climate on the
coastal ocean’s physical and biological states. The effective study requires long-term, persistent ocean monitoring utilizing autonomous vehicles to understand these processes better. This project aims to overcome the theoretical and technical challenges to enable heterogeneous groups of autonomous vehicles to perform intelligent sampling in dynamic and sensory-denied environments, focusing on the maritime domain. The success of these endeavors will improve weather forecasting,
underwater transport dynamics understanding, and modeling and predicting various physical phenomena in aquatic environments. This project aims to advance robotics and ocean sciences by creating novel mapping, localization, navigation, and robot-human communication techniques that enable autonomous aquatic vehicles to sample intelligently in sensor-denied, dynamic environments. The planned novel frameworks to map representation, localization, and navigation can find applications in mobile robot systems beyond aquatic vehicles such as subterranean and space robotics.

Dates Active: 2020 — 2023