Development Of Unmanned Surface Vehicle Research Articles

A Study on the Development of Unmanned Surface Vehicle(USV) Launch and Recovery Device using ARIZ-85C

A Study on the Development of Unmanned Surface Vehicle(USV) Launch and Recovery Device using ARIZ-85C

Perspectives for the development of unmanned surface vehicles in Colombia: Cotecmar case

The fourth industrial revolution began a few years ago with the advancement and integration of artificial intelligence, digitalization, and automation in different economic sectors. The naval industry in different countries has also been at the forefront of this revolution, introducing robotics to achieve ships with levels of automation and surface vehicles with autonomous navigation, which can operate without crew on board. This is how the Colombian naval industry has also started this path towards maturity in the development and integration of 4.0 technologies in unmanned surface vehicles (USV), being pointed out in the naval development plan 2042 [1] of the Colombian Navy as an opportunity for technological advancement. COTECMAR, being a fundamental part in the support and projection of the Colombian Navy's capabilities, proposes a route for the design and construction of the first Colombian USV; for this reason, this article presents through a review, the efforts and progress made in the past and to date, as well as what is proposed for the future, the challenges and impact on the Colombian naval industry. This review will allow the generation of a strategic vision in the current members of the project and may also generate new interested parties that, through their knowledge, will generate valuable contributions that can promote a project that will guide the Colombian Navy towards the technological vanguard.

Vibration energy harvesting from an unmanned surface vehicle: Concept design, open sea tests and harvester optimization

With the growing worldwide attention to marine environment protection, marine resource exploration, and so on, unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) have become one of the critical mobile marine observation equipment. However, USVs generally rely on limited onboard batteries to provide electricity, and thus, they have low endurance and poor load capacity. The lack of a long-term power supply is currently a great challenge for the further application and development of USVs. Harvesting energy from the working environment of USVs is a promising solution to address that problem. To demonstrate the possibility of this scheme, a physical prototype of a novel USV with a built-in vibration energy harvester has been fabricated and tested in an open sea for the first time. Moreover, a full-coupled mathematical model is developed to further optimize the power performance of the USV based on the Taguchi method. Experimental results show that this prototype can generate a maximum instantaneous electric power of 277.71 mW, 112.95 mW and 101.27 mW when the USV is in a status of towage, propulsive and free-floating, respectively. Simulation results present that the optimized USV can achieve a mean electric power of 246.14 mW, which is improved by 49.88% compared with the unoptimized results of the developed prototype.

Mask-VRDet: A robust riverway panoptic perception model based on dual graph fusion of vision and 4D mmWave radar

With the development of Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs), the perception of inland waterways has become significant to autonomous navigation. RGB cameras can capture images with rich semantic features, but they would fail in adverse weather and at night. As a perception sensor that has initially emerged in recent years, 4D millimeter-wave radar (4D mmWave radar) can work in all weather and has more abundant point-cloud features than ordinary radar, but it also suffers from water-surface clutter seriously. Furthermore, the shape and outline of dense point cloud captured by 4D mmWave radar are irregular. CNN-based neural networks treat features as 2D rectangle grids, which excessively favor image modality and are unfriendly to radar modality. Therefore, we transform both features of image and radar into non-Euclidean space as graph structures. In this paper, we focus on robust panoptic perception in inland waterways. Firstly, we propose the first Clutter-Point-Removal (CPR) algorithm for 4D mmWave radar, removing water-surface clutter and improving the recall of radar targets. Secondly, we propose a high-performance panoptic perception model based on the graph neural network called Mask-VRDet, fusing features of vision and radar to simultaneously perform object detection and semantic segmentation. To the best of our knowledge, Mask-VRDet is the first riverway panoptic perception model based on vision-radar graphical fusion. It outperforms other single-modal and fusion models, and achieves state-of-the-art performance on our collected dataset. We release our code at https://github.com/GuanRunwei/Mask-VRDet-Official.

FEATURE SUPPLICATION AND CLASSIFICATION MARITIME UNMANNED SURFACE VESSELS IN UKRAINE NAVAL FORCES

The work examines the relevance of the issue of the comprehensive development of the class of unmanned surface vehicles for the implementation of civil and military tasks at sea. The list of tasks that can be most successfully solved using unmanned surface vehicles has been determined. The most typical and relevant tasks at sea are various monitoring activities, search operations in accident areas, support of industrial activities, compilation and refinement of models of the sea floor relief, coastline, and so on. The circle of relevant military tasks has also been outlined, namely reconnaissance, damage to the enemy, protection of coastal areas, setup of mines, mine countermeasures, delivery of personnel and cargo to designated areas, and so on. An analysis of the characteristics of existing unmanned surface vehicles of the leading countries of the world has been conducted, as well as the possibilities of their application for the performance of a wide range of civil tasks at sea and features of their use as vehicles for carrying out military missions. It has been determined that in the process of further development, the main priorities are seen as increasing autonomy, equipping unmanned surface vehicles with modular executive systems, introducing artificial intelligence for direct control of unmanned vehicles and weapons, increasing the system's survivability, improving the technical characteristics of communication channels for information and task exchange. Currently, the most relevant channel for control is considered to be the satellite communication channel, as it is distance-independent, resistant to jamming and interception, and does not require significant energy consumption. Proposals have been made regarding the distribution of unmanned surface vehicles into classes, namely small, medium, and large, which cover all existing types of unmanned surface vehicles. The main terms and definitions of unmanned surface vehicles that are using in NATO countries have also been analyzed, and the main terms and definitions in this direction have been proposed. The purpose of the article is to make proposals for the development of unmanned surface vehicles and to identify promising areas for their use in solving various tasks at sea.

Kayak Drone – a silent acoustic unmanned surface vehicle for marine research

Advancements in technologies have led to a rapid development of unmanned surface vehicles (USV) for marine ecosystem monitoring. The design, size, and scientific payload of the USVs differ as they are built for different purposes. Here, we present the design criteria and detailed technical solutions of a prototype USV which has been built to fulfill the following experimental and operational needs; the USV should be used for inshore and shallow water acoustic monitoring, offshore comparison of echo sounder recordings from the USV and research vessels, monitor natural fish schooling behavior and seabird-fish behavioral interactions. The prototype has been built over a period of 5 years with steadily quality improvements. As the hull is based on an expedition double kayak, the USV is named Kayak Drone, and we aimed at building the Kayak Drone using of-the-shelf hardware and existing open-source software. This allowed for the development of a modular and well-functioning USV at a relatively low cost. The Kayak Drone produces very little noise and in situ experiments show that the Kayak Drone can record echo sounder data of fish near the surface without disturbing their natural distribution and behavior. One in situ study shows that the Kayak Drone could navigate within a couple of meters from swimming puffin and other seabirds without triggering escape. These results demonstrate that the Kayak Drone can be utilized to produce unbiased survey estimates for fish distributed in shallow waters and near the surface, which is very important for many fish stock assessments and managements. Furthermore, it can also be used as a tool to observe the predation by seabirds on fish schools without interfering with their natural interspecific behavior, which traditionally has been very difficult. The use of the Kayak Drone is not restricted to these tasks, and we foresee that the Kayak Drone can be utilized in many different experiments where a silent platform is needed.

Study On The Application Of Thermoelectric Coolers Inside Unmanned Surface Vehicles

The development of unmanned surface vehicles for military and commercial needs is increasing as the development of autonomous control systems. The farther the operation range of unmanned surface vehicles makes the propulsion motor generated heat and decreased the performance of the vehicle. This study aims to analyze the application of a thermoelectric cooler to decrease the temperature of the electric motors as a propulsion system on the unmanned surface vehicle. The research was carried out by prototyping the thermoelectric cooler 12V and tested at the prototype of unmanned surface vehicles with a length overall 1.5 m. The results showed the application of a thermoelectric cooler potentially effective to decrease the electric motor temperature by as much as 26.3 ?C by neglect the heat loss due to convection. The results of this study contributed to the development of reliable unmanned surface vehicles.

Navigating high‐speed unmanned surface vehicles: System approach and validations

AbstractWith an increasing interest in the deployment of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) to support complex ocean operations, high‐speed USVs (≥40 knots) have become an important option, especially in accomplishing demanding tasks such as coastal guarding. At present, there is a vast amount of studies focusing on the development of USVs' autonomous navigation systems, and the results of most of them have only been verified by simulations or demonstrations on low‐speed experimental USVs (≤20 knots). It remains unclear how high‐speed USVs would perform in real applications. In particular, when USVs are navigating at high‐speed, reliable obstacle detections and robust motion control become increasingly difficult to achieve than in normal conditions. This paper therefore presents a new autonomous navigation system for high‐speed USVs with the system software and hardware been designed on the basis for ensuring a safe and reliable operation. Within such a system, a collision avoidance algorithm based on velocity obstacle able to adjust the USV's heading and speed in real‐time has been integrated. A local environment modelling method and a heading maintain method by considering Coast Guard International Regulations for Avoiding Collision at Sea are proposed to improve the reliability and stability of the system. The effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed system has been verified and validated by hardware‐in‐the‐loop simulation tests and sea trials on a high‐speed USV (“Tianxing No. 1”) in practical maritime environments. Results show that the autonomous navigation system adapts to the characteristics of high‐speed USVs and can guide high‐speed USVs (≥40 knots) in realising a safe autonomous navigation, which significantly improves the USV's autonomy level.

Design and Development of Unmanned Surface Vehicle for Meteorological Monitoring

In view of the paucity of hydrometeorological data, inefficiency and high cost of manual detection, a design scheme of meteorological monitoring unmanned surface vehicle (USV) based on STM32 MCU (Microcontroller Unit, which is also known as Single Chip Microcomputer) is proposed in this paper. The path planning is designed by combining the image data acquired by camera with improved RRT-path algorithm (rapidly-exploring random tree algorithm based on auxiliary path), and then motors are controlled so as to realize autonomous cruise control of USV using the incremental PID algorithm. In addition, the design can also realize real-time monitoring of meteorological data detected by meteorological sensors on the USV through upper computer. Compared with the traditional scheme, the path planning, autonomous cruise is as well as online monitoring function of the scheme presented below enable USVs have full autonomous capability to realize on-line monitoring of meteorological data.

Modeling and Control Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) with Hybrid Drivetrain

With the rapid development of unmanned surface vehicle (USV), the development of hybrid electric vehicles on USV is a technology that has a very important role to overcome the problem of how long the vehicle can be used. In hybrid electric vehicles (HEV), the main components consist of generators, electric motors, and batteries. Modeling component is intended to design models that fit on unmanned surface vehicle and represent the state of USV with hybrid drivetrain. This paper focuses on modeling USV with hybrid drivetrain. This vehicle uses a series configuration so that the generator act as a power generating system. The power system on USV was chosen using hybrid sources of DC generator and lithium-ion battery pack. The optimal size of DC generator and battery pack are very important to ensure that USV can work for a long period of time. This paper describes the simple characteristics of a DC generator with a PI controller and gain-scheduling PI controller which is accurate in generating 380V output voltage according to the initial plan to be built. We also described the model of permanent magnet dc motor as a driver in USV and described simulation about 200Ah 36V lithium-ion batteries. The development of this model will be represented in MATLAB/Simulink.

Greedy Mechanism Based Particle Swarm Optimization for Path Planning Problem of an Unmanned Surface Vehicle.

Recently, issues of climate change, environment abnormality, individual requirements, and national defense have caused extensive attention to the commercial, scientific, and military development of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs). In order to design high-quality routes for a multi-sensor integrated USV, this work improves the conventional particle swarm optimization algorithm by introducing the greedy mechanism and the 2-opt operation, based on a combination strategy. First, a greedy black box is established for particle initialization, overcoming the randomness of the conventional method and excluding a great number of infeasible solutions. Then the greedy selection strategy and 2-opt operation are adopted together for local searches, to maintain population diversity and eliminate path crossovers. In addition, Monte-Carlo simulations of eight instances are conducted to compare the improved algorithm with other existing algorithms. The computation results indicate that the improved algorithm has the superior performance, with the shortest route and satisfactory robustness, although a fraction of computing efficiency becomes sacrificed. Moreover, the effectiveness and reliability of the improved method is also verified by its multi-sensor-based application to a USV model in real marine environments.

A review of unmanned surface vehicle development

This paper provides a review of the development of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs). Their potential applications and developmental trends are also discussed. Based on active works in this fields, USVs may potentially be integrated into the existing force structures of manned ships, offering a cost-effective solution for performing various types of marine operations with minimal risk to the personnel.

지형 탐색 및 측량용 무인수상정(USV) 개발

지형 탐색 및 측량용 무인수상정(USV) 개발

Analysis of Design Directions for Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs)

In recent years, because of the development of marine military science technology, there is a growing interest in the unmanned systems throughout the world. Also, the demand of Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) which can be autonomously operated without the operator intervention is increasing dramatically. The growing interests lie in the facts that those USVs can be manufactured at much lower costs, and can be operated without the human fatigue, while can be sent to the hostile or quite dangerous areas that are inherently unhealthy for human operators. The utilization and the deployment of such vessels will continue to grow in the future. In this paper, along with the technological development of unmanned surface vehicles, we investigate and analyze the cases of already developed platforms and identify the trends of the technological advances. Additionally, we suggest the future directions of development.

Case Analysis for USV Integrated Mission Planning System

Advanced countries around the world are spurring the development of Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) that can operate autonomously at marine environment. The key enabling technology for such USVs is the mission planning system (MPS) that can autonomously navigate through the harsh waters. The MPS not only has the functions for the navigation, but also has the capabilities, such as obstacle avoidance, malfunction corrections, dealing with unexpected events, return home functions, and many other eventualities that cannot be programmed in advance. The autonomy levels are increasingly moving higher and it is foreseeable that the trend will continue in the future. The main purpose of this paper is the analysis of the MPS onboard the USVs, in terms of the categories, functions, and technological details. Also, we analyze the case study of autonomous mission planning control systems in various fields and introduce the features that constitute the critical functionalities of the mission planning systems.

Development and missions of unmanned surface vehicle

The navy and other Department of Defense organizations are increasingly interested in the use of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) for a variety of missions and applications. The term USV refers to any vehicle that operates on the surface of the water without a crew. USVs have the potential, and in some cases the demonstrated ability, to reduce risk to manned forces, provide the necessary force multiplication to accomplish military missions, perform tasks which manned vehicles cannot, and do so in a way that is affordable for the navy. A survey of USV activities worldwide as well as the general technical challenges of USVs was presented below. A general description of USVs was provided along with their typical applications. The technical challenges of developing a USV include its intelligence level, control, high stability, and developmental cost reduction. Through the joint efforts of researchers around the world, it is believed that the development of USVs will enter a new phase in the near future, as USVs could soon be applied widely both in military and civilian service.

A multi-sensor data fusion navigation system for an unmanned surface vehicle

Worldwide there is an increasing interest in the development of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs). In order for such vehicles to undertake missions, they require accurate, robust, and reliable navigation systems. This paper describes the implementation of a fault tolerant autonomous navigation approach for a USV named Springer. An intelligent multi-sensor data fusion navigation algorithm is proposed that is based on a modified form of a federated Kalman filter (FKF) utilizing a fuzzy logic adaptive technique. The fuzzy adaptive technique is used to adjust the measurement noise covariance matrix R to fit the actual statistics of the noise profile present in the incoming sensor measured data using a covariance matching method. Information feedback factors employed in the FKF are tuned on the basis of the accuracy of each sensor. In order to compare the fault-tolerant performance, several fuzzy-logic-based cascaded Kalman filter architectures are also considered. Simulation results demonstrate the algorithm's capability under different types of sensor fault.