Preliminary Results for Model-Based Adaptive Control of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

We discuss a novel autonomous system which integrates onboard deliberation with execution and probabilistic state estimation for an adaptive Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for deep sea exploration. The work is motivated by the need to have AUVs be goal-directed, perceptive, adaptive and robust in the context of dynamic and uncertain conditions. The challenges leading to deployment required dealing with modeling uncertainty and integrating control loops at different levels of abstraction and response for a dynamic environment. The system is general-purpose and adaptable to other ocean going and terrestrial platforms.