Littoral Navigation Autonomy for Unmanned Surface Vehicle

Unmanned underwater and surface vehicles are increasingly being used to provide persistent littoral surveillance and a wide array of autonomous operations. Autonomous maritime navigation with obstacle avoidance requires adherence to the U.S. Coast Guard and International Maritime Organization (IMO) collision avoidance regulations (COLREG), a.k.a. “Rules-of-the-Road”. Robotic Marine Systems (RMS), Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Newport, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology Ocean Engineering (MIT) have jointly developed and demonstrated baseline algorithms and multi-behavior control technologies to implement optimal safe navigation. Results from this research will also provide the critical maritime situation awareness required for Littoral Navigation Autonomy for Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV). General Dynamics Robotics Research (GDRS) have developed and demonstrated maritime situation awareness with passive video camera arrays. Automated maritime situation awareness technology will also transition to the thousands of sensor systems required for the Sea Power 21 initiatives: Sea Base Force Protection and Maritime Domain Awareness.