Intelligent autonomy for the Manta Test Vehicle

The Navy's next generation unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV) missions include (1) long-range intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (2) tactical oceanography and (3) antisubmarine warfare. To support the vision to perform these missions with unmanned platforms, significant increases in the levels of system autonomy and on-board autonomous processing are required. The Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC), Division Newport and the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory have teamed to perform research and development in the area of autonomy and autonomous processing necessary to support next-generation UUV missions. The paper outlines the autonomy requirements of these missions with respect to the capabilities of UUVs that are fielded or currently under development. The approach taken to develop the autonomous processing capabilities required of these missions is outlined. The paper also discusses the progress that has been made in the development of the Navy's next generation autonomous, unmanned undersea vehicle testbed, the Manta Test Vehicle (MTV), The MTV is a non-traditionally shaped UUW that is being designed and fabricated by NUWC. The vehicle has the dimensions of 34 ft/spl times/16 ft/spl times/8 ft which allows significant payload capability for sensing elements and related processing equipment. MTV was conceived to help push the envelope on what could be achieved in an unmanned system and will serve as the testbed for Intelligent Autonomy R&D.