Development of a Virtual Environment for Monitoring Underwater Electrical Cables by an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Based on Fuzzy Cellular Automata

Abstract

The object of the study is to enhance operational efficiency and reduce fuel consumption of autonomous underwater vehicles during the monitoring of underwater electrical and optical cables based on FCA under conditions of uncertainty. To achieve the goal of the research fuzzy cellular automata are used, combining the advantages inherent in traditional cellular automata and provided by the capabilities of fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic. The cable location uncertainty is caused by possible earthquakes, turbulent currents, random impacts of anchors or fishing gear, cable fouling by marine vegetation and terrorist attacks. The developed approach allows to synthesise a Pareto-optimal vehicle route along the estimated coordinates of the object of study, providing minimum fuel consumption for minimum cable inspection time and satisfying the given system of constraints. Formal models are based on the use of fuzzy cellular automata, which are used to describe the three-dimensional model of the operating environment, zones and objects that hinder or limit the movement, and the behaviour of the underwater vehicle. The most significant results are the formal description of the problem solution space, and the method of modelling the route of an autonomous underwater vehicle in space to improve the efficiency and quality of the solution of the problem of monitoring the state of the object of interest. The significance of the results obtained is the possibility of solving a complex multi-criteria optimisation problem of finding the route of an autonomous underwater vehicle to monitor the cable system in three-dimensional space.