Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CoRIS) Institute

Taskable and Adaptable Autonomy for Heterogeneous Marine Vehicles

Geoff Hollinger and Julie A. AdamsCollaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CoRIS) Institute

Kipp Shearman, Jonathan Nash, and Jack BarthCollege of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences

April, 2018

Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CoRIS) Institute

Motivation: Autonomous Ocean Monitoring➢ Ocean monitoring provides insight into

many ocean features• Coastal upwellings• Hypoxia• Chemical spills

➢ Traditional methods for long-term ocean monitoring are inefficient• Research vessel time costs upwards of

$30,000 per day• Autonomous underwater and surface

vehicles can reduce this cost• Current levels of autonomy are

insufficient to gather critical data without highly-trained operators

2

Newport, OR

Upwellings

Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CoRIS) Institute

3

Challenge 1 : Decision Support Systems➢ Operator support tool

• Allows for high-level decision making by operator

• Visualization of existing and predicted environmental features (temperature, salinity, currents, etc.)

• Compatible with heterogeneous underwater and surface vehicles

• Integration of satellite data and ocean models

Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CoRIS) Institute

Challenge 2: Adaptive Autonomous Control➢ Multi-Robot data gathering

• Collaborative mapping from asynchronous observations

• Topological planning to improve efficiency

• Distributed methods for multiple vehicles

S. McCammon and G. Hollinger “Topological Hotspot Identification for Informative Path Planning with a Marine

Robot” ICRA, Brisbane, May 2018 (to appear)4

Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CoRIS) Institute

Challenge 3: Failure Recovery➢ Autonomous failure identification

and recovery• Operate with minimal technician

intervention• Incorporate uncertainty into

probabilistic detection and recovery• Information theoretic and statistical

methods applied to data from a robot’s sensors

5

Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CoRIS) Institute

Field testing of marine vehicle autonomy➢ Year 1:

• Initial visualization tools implemented in the field

• Underwater and surface vehicles deployed together

➢ Year 2:• Adaptive decision making• Failure recovery testing

➢ Year 3:• Final testing of all components

of the system

6

Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CoRIS) Institute

Come see our poster!NSF IIS-1723924:

Taskable and Adaptable Autonomy for Heterogeneous Marine Vehicles

7

PI

Graduate Students

Geoff Hollinger

Julie A. Adams

KippShearman

Jonathan Nash

Jack Barth

Matthew Frantz

Seth McCammon

Gilberto Marcon

Jasmine Nahorniak

June Marion

Faculty Research Assistants

Pat Welch

Co-PIs