Hydro-Thermal Vent Mapping with Multiple AUV's

Abstract : The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) and the Instituto Superior Technico, Lisbon (IST) have a long standing memorandum of agreement dating back to 1994 for the exchange of scientific ideas, visits of faculty and students, and to perform collaborative work. In the past we have collaborated on joint papers, the shared supervision of doctoral work, and a shared effort on the evaluation of AUV control system methodology and strategic level mission specifications using Petri net methods. This is a NICOP project aimed at developing the technology of multiple cooperating AUV's in a shallow water vent mapping mission. The mission will develop multi vehicle cooperative strategies and control using radio and acoustic communications. Results of both sonar and video images will be obtained in which the Portuguese vehicle - MARIUS and a surface catamaran (AZIMOV) will perform broad are survey to identify vent clusters, while the NPS vehicle - ARIES will require vent cluster locations and perform close in data gathering.