Demonstrated Environment/Harware Cooperation for Expanded Riverine Coverage

The Barron Associates/Virginia Tech team believes that intelligent use of ambient riverine environmental factors together with novel drifter design and low-energy articulation is the key to enabling large non-overlapping river coverage. The proposed phase I research program focuses on (1) identifying key river characteristics which may be leveraged by riverine drifters, (2) fabricating a novel riverine vehicle with a motion control system which respects and cooperates with the river environment, (3) on-line learning to update a priori environment models with new information based on observations, and (4) in-river demonstration of the composite design. The overarching goal of the proposed program of research and development is to leverage known and learned characteristics of the riverine environment to demonstrate efficient non-overlapping river coverage through intelligent vehicle design, mission planning, and real-time reaction to unforeseen characteristics. The team believes that an approach that explicitly considers and cooperates with the riverine environment has the potential to significantly outperform a system that treats the environment as a disturbance. Also, the ability to learn and update a priori models enables the system to function efficiently in situations where the environment has changed significantly or situations where little or no a priori information is available.