Smart Materials and Adaptive and Novel Technologies Applied to Unmanned Underwater Riverine Craft (MANTA-UURC)

NextGen and HyPerComp, building on work done under a DARPA Phase II SBIR entitled"Unmanned Underwater Riverine Craft (UURC),"propose to develop a 10-lb AUV with a range of 30 miles and reliable navigation capabilities for riverine reconnaissance. In Phase II we designed an autonomous bio-mimetic UURC with undulating fin propulsion, which can provide high efficiency at cruise speeds of interest, as well as low levels of disturbance in the water. We have fabricated and tested two such vehicles, with total weight of 40 and 90 lbs, and cruise speed of 2 and 0.75 Knots, respectively. Under this Enhancement program, to achieve the challenging range and size requirements, improvements in several technical areas will be investigated: vehicle configuration to minimize drag; fin design to reduce actuation and system weight as well as maximize thrust; energy management to optimize energy usage; packaging of batteries to increase storage capacity; and light-weight composite hull design to reduce weight. We will build 3 prototype vehicles, with the final demonstration vehicle being a fully optimized system, tested in open water to validate endurance and SLAM performance. At the end of this 18-month enhancement program effort we expect to achieve a TRL = 6.