Facilities of AUV search missions planning

The paper deals with facilities automating the process of mission preparation for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) carrying out search tasks. Discussing facilities include: the operator's software tools for editing, simulating and supervising of AUV missions, task description language (including group operations) and the algorithm generating a trajectory covering arbitrary shaped areas (i.e. the coverage algorithm). The main component of the operator's software is the launch wizard, which assists to launch AUV and obtain results step by step using graphical interface. Analysis of available task description languages for AUVs was performed to establish requirements to the proposed declarative notation of a mission (Denom). The search mission is used to illustrate advantages of declarative approach to planning. Also the coverage algorithm based on linear programming is proposed.