Advancing Autonomy in Unmanned Marine Vehicles

Unmanned surface vehicles are an important component of long duration ocean sensing systems. Working alone, they are capable of a sustained sensing presence along shorelines where gliders cannot operate due to shallow water or high currents. Effective and safe long duration missions require a collision avoidance capability consistent with the Coast Guard Collision Regulations (COLREGS) which are written for human operators. Our approach uses a form of multi-objective optimization using the interval programming (IvP) model to produce algorithms that will assist unmanned surface vehicles to comply with COLREGS autonomously.