Abstract :
ARICS is an embedded autonomous mission controller (AMC), designed to be used onboard highly autonomous vehicles (AV). It is designed to meet the requirements for extended autonomous capabilities. Such capabilities are required by long range, long endurance AVs, such as autonomous underwater vehicles-AUVs. Although the architecture is kept as generic and common as possible, the specific functional processing modules (FPMs) may be different for various vehicles and applications. ARICS is designed to provide the AUV with the following onboard, real-time, self-contained capabilities: a) Goal-directed and event-driven reactive mission and system management; b) Plan updating, adjusting, or replanning; c) Complete in-mission, on-the-move, planning; d) Context-sensitive and event-driven exception handling; e) Fault management, error recovery, and module/functionality reconfiguration; f) Coordinating the AUV´s cooperative operation with other AUVs, when operating in cooperative mode; g) Optimal resource management. This paper describes the architecture of ARICS, the architecture of the Mission Manager, the architecture of the main FPMs, the data flow between the processes, as well as, design principles and implementation issues
Keywords :
intelligent control; marine systems; mobile robots; real-time systems; reconfigurable architectures; AMC; ARICS; AUV; AV; autonomous reconfigurable intelligent control system; autonomous underwater vehicles; context-sensitive event-driven exception handling; cooperative operation; embedded autonomous mission controller; error recovery; event-driven operation; fault management; goal-directed operation; module/functionality reconfiguration; optimal resource management; plan adjustment; plan updating; replanning; Design engineering; Guidelines; Intelligent control; Intelligent vehicles; Mobile robots; Predictive models; Real time systems; Remotely operated vehicles; Resource management; Underwater vehicles;
