Autonomy for operational MCM AUVs, based on high resolution sonar

The major concern of Mine Counter Measures (MCM) domain is to keep the men far from the mine threat while having a high level of confidence in the detection and classification of possible threats. The development of unmanned MCM vehicles allows to put away the crew from danger, and giving autonomy to these vehicles both improves their operational efficiency and reduces the post mission residual risk of missing a mine and post mission analysis time. This paper aims to demonstrate how autonomy is an operational need for AUVs, and how we can benefit from real time SAS processing to increase autonomy and reliability of an MCM AUV.