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Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have a great potential use for the United States Marine Corps and United States Navy. When performing amphibious operations, underwater mines present a danger for the forces going ashore. The use of underwater vehicles for the detection of this mines and signaling to the Amphibious Ready Group is very attractive. With advancements in hardware and object oriented language technology, more complicated and robust software can be developed. The Naval Postgraduate School Center for AUV Research has been designing, building, operating, and researching AUVs since 1987. Each generation of vehicles has provided substantially increased in operational capabilities and level of sophistication in the hardware and software respectively. With the advancement in real-time computer languages support, object oriented technology, and cost efficient and high performance hardware, this thesis lays the foundations to develop a software system for the execution level using the Java language. We look into the Java Real-Time specifications and extension to familiarize with the capabilities of Java for realtime support, and study Java boards and its application for embedded real-time systems. We developed an object-oriented design for the execution level control software and implemented the design in Java. A testing phase is still under work. http://archive.org/details/executionlevelja109455509 Captain, United States Marine Corps Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) are becoming ubiquitous in the framework of U.S. Navy operations. According to the U.S. Navy₂s UUV Master Plan (2004), research and development will expand UUV capabilities that enable diverse roles from Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) and Mine Countermeasures to Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) and Information Operations (IO). However, typical UUVs are severely limited in operational characteristics such as endurance and range which prevents their use conducting certain missions. A novel UUV is currently being designed that is projected to support significantly greater endurance and range characteristics. This UUV is called Seadiver and is being designed by Institute of Engineering Science of Toulon, France with support from Naval Postgraduate School. It is a low-cost glider UUV which generates propulsion not with propellers or jet pumps, but rather by controlling its buoyancy. This method of propulsion is quite efficient and maybe capable of autonomous operation up to 30 days with a range of around 700 nautical miles. A UUV with such endurance and range exposes military missions previously impractical for UUVs especially when used in concert as an array of many UUVs. This thesis creates a simulation using NPS-produced software simulation tools Simkit, Viskit and AUV Workbench that analyzes the capabilities and effectiveness of Seadiver UUVs conducting missions of tactical interest. http://archive.org/details/simulatingcandid109453664 US Navy (USN) author. Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Because of range limitations imposed by speed and power supplies, covert launch and recovery of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) near the operating area will be required for their use in many military applications. This thesis documents the implementation of precision control and planning facilities on the Phoenix AUV that will be required to support recovery in a small tube and provides a preliminary study of issues involved with AUV recovery by submarines. Implementation involves the development of low-level behaviors for sonar and vehicle control, mid-level tactics for recovery planning, and a mission planning system for translating high-level goals into an executable mission. Sonar behaviors consist of modes for locating and tracking objects, while vehicle control behaviors provide the ability to drive to and maintain a position relative to a tracked object. Finally, a mission-planning system allowing graphical specification of mission objectives and recovery parameters is implemented. Results of underwater virtual world and in-water testing show that precise AUV control based on sonar data and its use by higher-level tactics to plan and control recovery. Additionally, the mission-planning expert system has been shown to reduce mission planning time by approximately two thirds and results in missions with fewer logical and programming errors than manually generated missions http://archive.org/details/precisioncontrol109458841 Lieutenant, United States Navy

The Naval Postgraduate School autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) phoenix did not have any sonar classification capabilities and only a basic collision avoidance system. The Phoenix also did not have the capability of dynamically representing its environment for path planning purposes. This thesis creates a sonar module that handles real time object classification and enables collision avoidance at the Tactical level. The sonar module developed communicates directly with the available sonar and preprocesses raw data to a range - bearing data pair. The module then processes the range - bearing data using parametric regression to form line segments. A polyhedron building algorithm combines line segments to form objects and classifies them based on their attributes. When the Phoenix is transiting, the classifying algorithm detects collision threats and initiates collision avoidance procedures. The result of this thesis is a fully implemented sonar module on the Phoenix. This module was tested in a virtual world, test tank and in the first ever sea-water testing of the Phoenix. The sonar module has demonstrated real time sonar classification, run time collision avoidance and the ability to dynamically update the representation of the unknown environment. The sonar module is a forked process written in the 'C' language, functioning at the Tactical level. Source code and output from an actual Phoenix mission displaying the object classification of the sonar module are included. http://archive.org/details/realtimesonarcla109458890 Lieutenant, United States Navy Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are now being introduced into the fleet to improve Mine Warfare capabilities. Several AUVs are under government-contracted development. Mission planning and data reporting vary between vehicles and systems. This variance does not pose an immediate problem, as only one AUV is currently in production. However, as more AUVs are put into production, commands will begin to get multiple AUVs. Without a single mission command language, multiple systems will require familiarity with multiple languages. Extensible Markup Language (XML) and related technologies may be used to facilitate interoperability between dissimilar AUVs and extract and integrate mission data into Navy C4I systems. XML makes archive maintenance easier, XML documents can be accessed via an http server, and, in root form, XML is transferable on the fly by stylesheet. This thesis presents an XML-based mission command for the command and control of AUVs. In addition, this thesis discusses XML technology and how XML is a viable means of achieving interoperability. Furthermore, this thesis provides an example mission file using existing software, and demonstrates the future of XML in AUV technology. Finally, this work ends with a compelling argument for the use of an XML-based mission command language to command all AUVs. http://archive.org/details/anxmlbasedmissio10945975 Ensign, United States Navy Captain, United States Air Force Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.