Advanced mission management for long-range autonomous underwater vehicles

Long-range autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) need a higher degree of autonomy than short-range vehicles. That results from the limited communication possibilities during the mission execution-AUVs are out of communication range of a supporting vessel almost the whole time. There is no way to transfer a new mission plan into to a vehicle or to command a surface maneuver. That´s why the mission management system as the top level in the software architecture of an AUV is the key component for enabling complete autonomous operations. It has to observe the vehicle and environment conditions and to modify the mission plan given by an operator during mission preparation if the mission execution is endangered. This paper presents a hybrid mission management system consisting of several modules responsible for different tasks. Mission monitoring observes the execution of the mission plan and initiates a replanning if necessary. Mission Replanning is responsible for insertion, deletion and optimization of the involved maneuvers. As third module, the Chart Server checks the modified plan against a digital chart and modifies a route if a ground collision would occur. Preliminary simulation results of the optimization and the other modification methods conclude the paper.