Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Magnetic Mapping System

An Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Magnetic Mapping (MM) System has been developed and tested for military munitions detection as well as pipeline locating, wreck searches, and geologic surveys in underwater environments. The system is comprised of a high sensitivity Geometrics G-880AUV cesium vapor magnetometer integrated with a Teledyne-Gavia AUV and associated Doppler enabled inertial navigation further utilizing traditional acoustic bathymetric and side scan imaging. All onboard sensors and associated electronics are managed through customized crew members to autonomously operate through the vehicles primary control module. Total field magnetic measurements are recorded with asynchronous time-stamped data logs which include position, altitude, heading, pitch, roll, and electrical current usage. Pre-planned mission information can be uploaded to the system operators to define data collection metrics including speed, height above seafloor, and lane or transect spacing specifically designed to meet data quality objectives for the survey. As a result of the AUVs modular design, autonomous navigation and rapid deployment capabilities, the AUV MM System provides cost savings over current surface vessel surveys by reducing the mobilization/demobilization effort, thus requiring less manpower for operation and reducing or eliminating the need for a surface support vessel altogether. When the system completes its mission, data can be remotely downloaded via W-LAN and exported for use in advanced signal processing platforms. Magnetic compensation software has been concurrently developed to accept electrical current measurements directly from the AUV to address distortions from permanent and induced magnetization effects on the magnetometer. Maneuver and electrical current compensation terms can be extracted from the magnetic survey missions to perform automated post-process corrections. Considerable suppression of system noise has been observed over traditional compensation methods that do not use electrical current terms. Recent demonstrations of the AUV MM System conducted at test plots seeded with inert munitions show reliable detection of 75mm and larger projectiles at altitudes of over 2 meters above the seafloor. Improvement ratios between 11 and 12.4 were observed in the survey data after magnetic compensation, reducing system noise to approximately ±0.25 nano-Tesla. Co-registered side scan sonar images were acquired with the magnetic data to augment target analysis and interpretation. No net drift of the navigation solution was observed during survey missions thus confirming target positional accuracy to better than 1 meter.;