Unmanned Surface Vehicle Stabilization, Navigation and Collision Avoidance

Unmanned  Sea Surface Vehicles (USSV) will greatly enhance the effectiveness of the battleforce by being rapidly configured and deployed to carry out a variety of potentially hazardous missions without the cost or risk to life of sending a manned vessel.  A single mother ship has its force multiplied many fold by deploying and controlling multiple USSVs.  An essential enabling technology is therefore a maritime seaway navigation system, the development of which was the subject of our Phase I research project. During the Phase II effort, we will fully develop and implement the advocated stabilization and navigation algorithms in the high sea states on a Navy USSV. Our system will provide three functions: 1.  Stabilization of the hull to prevent excessive deck motion or capsizing in high sea state, 2.  Control of course and speed to navigate to designated target areas,  3.  Avoidance of Collisions with flotsam or other vessels.  Migration of the algorithms to a second Navy USSV is one of the options for this Phase II effort and implementation of the obstacle avoidance algorithm is the second option in this Phase II. The base effort of this Phase II will be developed on the same hardware and software platform that is being used on the Navy's low speed USSV (a planing hull with about 18,000 lb displacement, and a top speed of about 27 kt) which is the USSV to be considered for the first option of this Phase II.