Evaluation of the LSTS Toolchain for Networked Vehicle Systems on KTH Autonomous Maritime Vehicles

Abstract: The department of Naval Architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology is in posession of one Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) and a second is under construction. A project for doing hydrographic mapping using an Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) is also initiated. These projects raises the need for a software to easily send commands to vehicles and to review collected data. The ability to use each vehicle as a node in a network of vehicles is also requested. This thesis examines a software toolchain developed at the Underwater Systems and Technology Laboratory (LSTS) in Portugal for mission planning and control of networked autonomous vehicles. The toolchain constitutes primarily of Neptus, which provides an operator with a user interface for realtime control and feedback from vehicles, and DUNE. DUNE is a software running on-board vehicles and communicates with Neptus over a wireless network. As a first step, and as a limitation to this thesis, the toolchain has been used to control an autonomous rover. An autopilot receives waypoints in form of latitude/longitude coordinates from DUNE and periodically sends position and various sensor readings back. DUNE is running on a GNU/Linux computer and is responsible for storing a mission of multiple waypoints and to keep track of the progress. DUNE forwards vehicle location and sensor data to Neptus for feedback in the user interface and generation of plots. In conclusion the author was able to create and execute missions of an arbitrary number of waypoints. Graphs of basically any sensor reading could be generated through the Mission Review and Analysis tool contained by Neptus. Implementing the toolchain on the departments marine vehicles releases valuable time during field tests and will in the future provide a way for experimentation with deliberate planning tools; the next natural step toward complete autonomy.