Autonomous vehicle software taxonomy

A survey of software architectures for 12 autonomous underwater vehicles has been made. The analysis is performed in the context of an evaluation framework which focuses on each architecture´s important features, including its control distribution strategy, its use of modeling, and the types and representations of knowledge that it uses. A classification scheme has been developed which helps to associate the features of an architecture with vehicle performance characteristics. The manner in which vehicle control and decision-making are distributed among the elements of the software architectures is discussed. A specific onboard planning system architecture is proposed, and its characteristics are discussed in the context of the criteria that were used to evaluate the existing architectures