Joint evaluation of mission programming for underwater robots

Abstract

Underwater robotic systems require a control architecture that handles automatic control aspects and discrete-event management while considering real-time issues within a formalized framework in order to achieve a high degree of autonomy and robustness while performing missions. To extract generic characteristics of working implementations, we examine two methodologies developed independently by French and American research organizations to control their underwater robots. In particular, we study how a specific reactive and complex mission is encoded under the two different methodologies. Details of the methodologies along with mission programs created by each team to accomplish the evaluation mission are presented.