SBIR/STTR Award attributes
The US Navy has embarked on an effort to diversify its fleet to include fully unmanned surface platforms. As the endurance of these unmanned systems extends from days to months, pre-mission planning will be insufficient to handle the uncertainty in operations that occurs when transiting thousands of miles without operator input. Nowhere is this more pressing than in weather avoidance, where the chaotic nature of the dynamics limits practical forecasting to sixteen days of validity. Advanced planning and re-planning algorithms enable the platform to use machine forethought to avoid entering situations with dangerously restricted future actions. In Phase II, Metron developed a prototype of the Adverse Weather Avoidance, Re-planning, and Evasion (AWARE) planning tool that operates at the furthest extent of available meteorological and oceanographic (METOC) forecast data to enable long term planning. AWARE uses modern ideas in automated planning, synthesized forecast weather data, and incorporates platform capabilities to formulate a careful risk-aware decision process to map positions and times to the most favorable route. The resulting capability maximizes the opportunity for mission success while simultaneously minimizing risks to the platform. In Phase II.5, Metron will mature the prototype AWARE planning tool into a fully developed suite of software components compliant with the Navy’s Unmanned Maritime Autonomy Architecture (UMAA). Development will focus on implementing the UMAA services identified by Metron as dependencies of AWARE. To facilitate integration with the Navy’s fleet of USV’s Metron will initially target a shoreside implementation of the software in coordination with the Unmanned Operations Center (UOC) located at NIWC-PAC in San Diego, California to perform trials and experimentation of prototype software components. As the AWARE suite is purely a software product that will follow the UMAA standards, the technical work involved in integrating with the UOC can be directly transferable to the Overlord-, Medium-, and Large-USV platforms once they become more widely available. Metron will work with the UOC and other third-party organizations to supply the UMAA services that are associated with platform specific hardware and executive autonomy functions. The integration with the UOC will happen in two phases: First, the UMAA services developed during Phase II will be integrated to quickly generate real world lessons learned to guide development during the remainder of this effort. Second, all the UMAA services developed during Phases II and II.5 will be integrated to demonstrate the full system capabilities.
