Mine Countermeasures Research Articles

Motion Error Influence on Segmentation and Classification Performance in SAS-Based Automatic Mine Countermeasures

Synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) systems provide capabilities to construct high-resolution images of the seafloor and are, therefore, employed by state-of-the art systems for automatic detection and classification (ADAC) in mine countermeasurement applications. Typically, ADAC systems assume operation on well-focused SAS images. However, in practice, residual motion errors or other errors, e.g., a mismatch in the wave propagation speed, may still be present, leading to a degradation in the quality of SAS images. Consequently, it is of major interest to study the detection and classification behavior of an automatic system under the influence of residual motion and phase errors. First, we train our ADAC system using a database of well-focused SAS images. Subsequently, we use real sonar measurements from different sea trials to build a test database of SAS images where motion errors and sound-speed mismatches are artificially induced into the image reconstruction process to study the impact on segmentation, feature extraction, and classification rate. A relation between the image degradation and the individual tasks of the ADAC system is empirically demonstrated by assessing the image quality using a full-reference method. The obtained results illustrate a severe dependency of the ADAC system performance on the SAS image quality. At the same time, the results highlight the need for both image quality assessment schemes and robust segmentation and feature selection techniques, to improve the reliability of SAS-based target recognition systems under difficult conditions.

소나와 무인기뢰처리기 정보를 활용한 기뢰전 체계 설계 방안

기뢰는 수중에 설치되어 수상함과 잠수함을 공격하기 위한 폭발물로서, 기뢰전은 해군의 여러 가지 성분작전 중에서 매우 중요한 작전 중 하나이다. 본 논문은 기뢰전 일반 개념에 대한 이해로부터 기뢰탐색작전 및 소해작전의 소개와 본문에서 소개 할 몇 가지 기능을 통한 전반적인 기뢰전 체계 설계 방안을 제안한다. 기뢰전 체계의 기능으로는 소나 영상정보로부터 아다부스트 기법을 활용하여 기뢰영역을 탐지하는 기능과 기뢰탐색작전 및 소해작전의 수행 시 각각의 진행률을 계산하는 기능, 소나로부터 수신한 기뢰 표적으로 무인기뢰처리기를 유도하는 기능 등이 있다. The naval mine is the explosives that are installed in the water in order to attack surface ships or submarines. So mine warfare is a very important component of naval operations. In this paper, first, understanding of the general concept about mine warfare. Second, introduce the mine hunting progress and mine sweeping progress. And then, suggest the system design method of mine counter measure warfare using several functions. The functions are mine area detection algorithm for side scan sonar image using Adaboost algorithm, and calculation to mine hunting progress rate and mine sweeping progress rate. And techniques that lead the mine disposal vehicle(MDV) to mine.

Minehunting Mission Planning for Autonomous Underwater Systems Using Evolutionary Algorithms

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are increasingly being used to perform mine countermeasures (MCM) operations but its capabilities are limited by the efficiency of the planning process. Here we study the problem of multiobjective MCM mission planning with AUVs. The vehicle should cover the operating area while maximizing the probability of detecting the targets and minimizing the required energy and time to complete the mission. A multi-stage algorithm is proposed and evaluated. Our algorithm combines an evolutionary algorithm (EA) with a local search procedure, aiming at a more flexible and effective exploration and exploitation of the search space. An artificial neural network (ANN) model was also integrated in the evolutionary procedure to guide the search. The combination of different techniques creates another problem, related to the high amount of parameters that needs to be tuned. Thus, the effect of these parameters on the quality of the obtained Pareto Front was assessed. This allowed us to define an adaptive tuning procedure to control the parameters while the algorithm is executed. Our algorithm is compared against an implementation of a known EA as well as another mission planner and the results from the experiments show that the proposed strategy can efficiently identify a higher quality solution set.

효과기반의 대기뢰전 무인화 체계 최적화 방안 연구

효과기반의 대기뢰전 무인화 체계 최적화 방안 연구

Considering Mine Countermeasure Exploratory Operations Conducted by Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Considering Mine Countermeasure Exploratory Operations Conducted by Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Conceptual Design of Future Undersea Unmanned Vehicle (UUV) System for Mine Disposal

A conceptual design is proposed for an effective mine countermeasure (MCM) system, which consists of three unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) and 10-20 small charged deliverable vehicles. New underwater optical communication systems are introduced to improve onboard mine reconnaissance and decision making with the key technologies focused on system and communication efficiency, capability of data processing, and cost-effectiveness of MCM systems. The proposed UUV MCM system is cost-effective due to adapting disposable mine neutralization instruments, upgrading data process units, and configuring optical communication systems between heterogeneous underwater and surface vehicle units in operations. At the same time, efficient and reliable underwater optical and electromagnetic wave communication systems are also introduced and analyzed for future system applications.

A rail system for circular synthetic aperture sonar imaging and acoustic target strength measurements: Design/operation/preliminary results

A 22 m diameter circular rail, outfitted with a mobile sonar tower trolley, was designed, fabricated, instrumented with underwater acoustic transducers, and assembled on a 1.5 m thick sand layer at the bottom of a large freshwater pool to carry out sonar design and target scattering response studies. The mobile sonar tower translates along the rail via a drive motor controlled by customized LabVIEW software. The rail system is modular and assembly consists of separately deploying eight circular arc sections, measuring a nominal center radius of 11 m and 8.64 m arc length each, and having divers connect them together in the underwater environment. The system enables full scale measurements on targets of interest with 0.1° angular resolution over a complete 360° aperture, without disrupting target setup, and affording a level of control over target environment conditions and noise sources unachievable in standard field measurements. In recent use, the mobile cart carrying an instrumented sonar tower was translated along the rail in 720 equal position increments and acoustic backscatter data were acquired at each position. In addition, this system can accommodate both broadband monostatic and bistatic scattering measurements on targets of interest, allowing capture of target signature phenomena under diverse configurations to address current scientific and technical issues encountered in mine countermeasure and unexploded ordnance applications. In the work discussed here, the circular rail apparatus is used for acoustic backscatter testing, but this system also has the capacity to facilitate the acquisition of magnetic and optical sensor data from targets of interest. A brief description of the system design and operation will be presented along with preliminary processed results for data acquired from acoustic measurements conducted at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Panama City Division Test Pond Facility. [Work Supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research and The Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program.].

Improving Automatic Target Recognition with Forward Looking Sonar Mosaics

Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) is a key element needed to make Mine Countermeasure missions using robots entirely autonomous. While there has been much progress in applying ATR algorithms on high-resolution Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS) and sidescan sonar data, performing ATR with a low cost Forward Looking Sonar (FLS) is much more challenging. An algorithm for the detection of underwater man-made objects in FLS previously developed can work in real-time although it suffers considerably from typical noise in sonar images and false alarms. The work presented here shows that ATR algorithms can be exercised on sonar mosaics built also in real-time instead of raw data coming from the FLS. The use of mosaics can help the detection of the targets by reducing some noise (including harmonics from other acoustic devices mounted on the robot) and giving a better contrast to the images to be processed. Moreover, mosaic images can be useful for post-processing and data analysis. The mosaicking algorithm also runs in real-time to maintain the performance of the system and to be useful in real missions. It was tested both on data previously collected and in real experiments with different set-ups and with different sonars. The wide range of results obtained with different surface vehicles and in different situations demonstrate the usefulness of the method.

Sensor-Driven Online Coverage Planning for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

At present, autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) mine countermeasure (MCM) surveys are normally preplanned by operators using ladder or zig-zag paths. Such surveys are conducted with side-looking sonar sensors whose performance is dependent on environmental, target, sensor, and AUV platform parameters. It is difficult to obtain precise knowledge of all of these parameters to be able to design optimal mission plans offline. This research represents the first known sensor driven online approach to seabed coverage for MCM. A method is presented where paths are planned using a multiobjective optimization. Information theory is combined with a new concept coined branch entropy based on a hexagonal cell decomposition. The result is a planning algorithm that not only produces shorter paths than conventional means, but is also capable of accounting for environmental factors detected in situ. Hardware-in-the-loop simulations and in water trials conducted on the IVER2 AUV show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

International mine countermeasures exercise 2013: Role 2 Afloat

In May 2013 a Role 2 Afloat team was deployed on board the Bay-class Landing Ship Dock (Auxiliary) RFA CARDIGAN BAY as part of the US-led Task Force involved in the International Mine Countermeasures Exercise 2013 (IMCMEX 13). This article introduces a series of papers from the various departments that make up the Role 2 Afloat team explaining the make-up of the team and also the overall capability of the team to deliver Role 2 care in the maritime environment.

A detailed seabed signature from Hurricane Sandy revealed in bedforms and scour

On 30 October 2012, Hurricane Sandy made landfall near Brigantine New Jersey bringing widespread erosion and damage to the coastline. We have obtained a unique set of high‐resolution before and after storm measurements of seabed morphology and in situ hydrodynamic conditions (waves and currents) capturing the impact of the storm at an inner continental shelf field site known as the “Redbird reef”. Understanding the signature of this storm event is important for identifying the impacts of such events and for understanding the role that such events have in the transport of sediment and marine debris on the inner continental shelf. As part of an ONR‐sponsored program designed to understand and characterize the ripple dynamics and scour processes in an energetic, heterogeneous inner‐shelf setting, a series of high‐resolution geoacoustic surveys were conducted before and after Hurricane Sandy. Our overall goal is to improve our understanding of bedform dynamics and spatio‐temporal length scales and defect densities through the application of a recently developed fingerprint algorithm technique. Utilizing high‐resolution swath sonar collected by an AUV and from surface vessel sonars, our study focuses both on bedforms in the vicinity of manmade seabed objects and dynamic natural ripples on the inner shelf in energetic coastal settings with application to critical military operations such as mine countermeasures.

Автоматизация движения противоминного телеуправляемого подводного аппарата

Автоматизация движения противоминного телеуправляемого подводного аппарата

Fuzzy Track-Keeping Steering Design for a Precise Control of the Ship

In this paper we design the fuzzy logic autopilot to precise control and a track-keeping control of the ship. Precise control of ship has known an increasing interest in the last years. The main benefits of usage of autopilot for control of ship can be removing a man from the dangers of the undersea environment and reduction in cost of exploration of deep seas. Currently, it is common to use the special ship to accomplish missions as the inspection of coastal and off-shore structures, cable maintenance, as well as hydrographical surveys. In the military field they are employed in such tasks as surveillance, intelligence gathering, torpedo recovery and mine counter measures. Hence, a problem of its ability to move along a reference path and keep a desired orientation is regarded. A non-linear mathematical model describes the vehicle’s dynamics. Command signals are generated by an autopilot with fuzzy control law implemented. Some results of computer simulations are provided to demonstrate effectiveness, correctness and usefulness of the approach.

Sound Silencing Problem of Underwater Vehicles

This paper describes some common problems associated with negative influence of UUV self noise on detection aspect in water environment. Some tasks of military applications require silent behavior of UUVs: Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR), Rapid Environmental Assessment (REA), Mine Countermeasure (MCM) etc. Moreover, this paper review methods of underwater sound measurement and on the end as a summary presents results of an experiment from the water tank trials where were investigated three UUVs: one ROV and two biomimetic autonomous underwater vehicle.

Multiobjective planning for naval mine counter measures missions

Near-optimal scheduling and allocation for DoD missions is complicated by many factors, including multiple measures of effectiveness, mixed-initiatives, heterogeneity of systems and non-uniformity of homogenous systems; these factors contribute to a complex planning problem with non-linear, combinatorial, and continuous components that is further complicated by information uncertainty. In Navy, mine counter measure missions, planning entails components of the vehicle routing problem with time windows and flexible flowshop scheduling with pre-emptive maintenance. We present a multiobjective mine counter measures problem formulation and describe the non-dominated scheduler, a scheduling programme that parametrically explores continuous dimensions of the decision space, stochastically samples from exponentially large decision spaces, and uses surrogate metrics to bound computational complexity. This provides mission commander with a non-dominated set of alternative plans. This scheduler has been integrated into existing tools and is being evaluated by the US Navy for extension and integration into next-generation mine warfare decision aids.

Acoustic processor of the MCM sonar

This paper presents the concept of an acoustic processor of the mine countermeasure sonar. Developed at the Department of Marine Electronics Systems, Gdansk University of Technology, the acoustic processor is an element of the MG-89, a modernised underwater acoustic station. The focus of the article is on the modules of the processor. They are responsible for sampling analogue signals and implementing the algorithms controlling the measurement cycle and digital signal processing. As it performs the above functions, the device should be highly reliable and resistant to mechanical and weather conditions and ensure a user friendly operation. The functions of the processor software should help with object detection and classification. In addition to these properties, the acoustic processor should operate in real time. The results of measurements should be displayed with the shortest possible delay in relation to sounding signals to allow the operator to take decisions quickly and establish if the object poses a risk.

Relocating Underwater Features Autonomously Using Sonar-Based SLAM

This paper describes a system for reacquiring features of interest in a shallow-water ocean environment, using autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) equipped with low-cost sonar and navigation sensors. In performing mine countermeasures, it is critical to enable AUVs to navigate accurately to previously mapped objects of interest in the water column or on the seabed, for further assessment or remediation. An important aspect of the overall system design is to keep the size and cost of the reacquisition vehicle as low as possible, as it may potentially be destroyed in the reacquisition mission. This low-cost requirement prevents the use of sophisticated AUV navigation sensors, such as a Doppler velocity log (DVL) or an inertial navigation system (INS). Our system instead uses the Proviewer 900-kHz imaging sonar from Blueview Technologies, which produces forward-looking sonar (FLS) images at ranges up to 40 mat approximately 4 Hz. In large volumes, it is hoped that this sensor can be manufactured at low cost. Our approach uses a novel simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithm that detects and tracks features in the FLS images to renavigate to a previously mapped target. This feature-based navigation (FBN) system incorporates a number of recent advances in pose graph optimization algorithms for SLAM. The system has undergone extensive field testing over a period of more than four years, demonstrating the potential for the use of this new approach for feature reacquisition. In this report, we review the methodologies and components of the FBN system, describe the system's technological features, review the performance of the system in a series of extensive in-water field tests, and highlight issues for future research.

Xingtai City Coal the Mine Environment Geological Problems and Countermeasures

This article describes the Xingtai City, a typical large-scale modern coal mine, mine environmental geological problems arising due to the exploitation of coal resources, and the corresponding countermeasures and suggestions for different problems. Mainly introductions are the destruction of water resources, mine water hazard, mining subsidence and destruction of land resources, and guiding role in the safe production of coal and the surrounding environmental governance.

기뢰 탐색 작전용 무인잠수정 효과도 분석 시뮬레이션을 위한 시뮬레이션 모델 연구

In recent years, unmanned underwater vehicles(UUVs) have emerged as viable technical solution for conducting underwater search, surveillance, and clearance operations in support of mine countermeasure missions(MCMs) because of her autonomy and long time endurance capability. It is necessary for UUV for MCM system design to define system specification from various configuration alternatives. This paper introduces a simulation model for mine countermeasure mission effectiveness analysis and presents some simulation results under various tide conditions for validation of the proposed simulation model.

Nanostructured Coatings for U.S. Navy Applications

Abstract This article provides a brief overview of the applications of multimodal alumina-titania (n-AT) coatings stemming from a five-year program on thermal spray nanocoatings sponsored by the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR). In the main example, plasma sprayed n-AT coatings are applied to the propulsion shafts of Mine Countermeasure ships, bringing a fourfold increase in service life.