Toward a generalized architecture for unmanned underwater vehicles

A common feature of unmanned vehicles is their complexity, which grows apace and provides its own challenges. Frameworks for managing this growing complexity have always been one of the key aspects of designing an unmanned vehicle. In this paper, a generalized architecture is proposed to not only address the complexity in developing an unmanned vehicle, but also support the algorithm exchange and technology transfer for integrating efforts from different researchers. We first detail the autonomic element, which is the fundamental unit of the architecture. Then the architecture is constructed, and thorough discussions are given. Finally, simulations on a semi-physical platform are carried out to examine the performance of this architecture.