Automated Bathymetry Using an Autonomous Surface Craft

Thomas W. Vaneck, Claudia D. Rodriguez-Ortiz, Mads C. Schmidt

Abstract:	A prototype autonomous surface craft (ASC) is being developed at the MIT Sea Grant College Program’s Autonomous Vehicles Lab to economically collect bathymetric data in littoral regions. Potential uses of this data include coastal surveys and monitoring, mine countermeasure operations, and Physical and Biological Oceanography. This paper will describe the ASC “ARTEMIS” and present field experiment results. For bathymetric data to be of value the precise location of each data point must be known. To accomplish this, ARTEMIS uses a differentially corrected GPS-based fuzzy guidance controller to track to and cross a series of transect defining waypoints. The fuzzy controller is programmed in C and downloaded to a small onboard computer for execution. The fuzzy controller was found to be relatively easy to develop (not requiring a complex mathematical model of the vehicle’s dynamics), simple to tune, and robust to external disturbances. Field test results are presented and show that the guidance controller performed well on complex paths.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1996) June 19 - 21, 1996 Royal Sonesta Hotel Cambridge, MA
Pages:	329 - 334
Cite this article:	Updated citation: Published in NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation
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