This paper reports on the status and design of the operational remotely operated vehicle Victor 6000, rated for 6000 m depth and of the 3000 m depth autonomous underwater vehicle Asterxx operated by Ifremer the French Institute for Sea Exploitation. Victor 6000 is part of a global system built of subsystems, scientific modules, winch and cable, dead weight and umbilical, positioning subsystem u...

This dissertation concerns the development of a feedback control framework for coordinating multiple, sensor-equipped, autonomous vehicles into mobile sensing arrays to perform adaptive sampling of observed fields. The use of feedback is central; it maintains the array, i.e. regulates formation position, orientation, and shape, and directs the array to perform its sampling mission in response t...

Currently, research is underway at the Florida Institute of Technology (Florida Tech), to investigate the environmental impacts of oil development in the Prudhoe Bay region of the Beaufort Sea, along Alaska’s northern coast. Of particular interest are the impacts of construction of offshore gravel islands used for oil drilling and production. Construction of these islands may contribute to an i...

A critical problem in planning sampling paths for autonomous underwater vehicles is correctly balancing two issues. First, obtaining an accurate scalar field estimation and second, efficiently utilizing the stored energy capacity of the sampling vehicle. Adaptive sampling approaches can only provide solutions when real-time and a priori environmental data is available. In this paper we present ...

A powerful adaptive filter algorithm for estimation of forces acting on an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), and the corresponding adaptive control law which determines the desired heading commands are considered in this paper. Due to the complicated nature of AUV’s task and incorporation of the ocean current, uncertain parameters arise in thc equations of motion that constitute the AUV’s dy...