Projects   Undersea vehicles Project Organisation Contact Information Funding Personnel Goals Description Publications Goals The main objectives are in ecological monitoring of structurally complex marine habitats such as the Great Barrier Reef; in defence, for tasks such as autonomous navigation, mapping and search; and for monitoring of effects of oil and gas exploration activities in Australian coastal waters. The core Centre research being exploited in this area are developments in perception, sensing, data fusion and Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping navigation methods. The primary area of research related to this program is in the development of algorithms and methods capable of modelling natural reef environments using data collected by an autonomous robotic system capable of surveying and documenting change on the Great Barrier Reef. Description Current work has been focused on integrating a comprehensive suite of sensors onto the Autonomous Underwater Vehicles and the development of terrain aided navigation algorithms suitable for deployment in unstructured underwater environments. Future work will concentrate on the development of techniques suitable for generating higher resolution terrain models and tying these models to a priori, lower resolution models. This will require the development of methods capable of tracking and identifying large numbers of points within the SLAM framework. Alternatively, higher order features or richer underlying models might be used to increase the efficiency of the tracking process. In addition, we are exploring the unique requirements for coordinated navigation, mission planning and decision making for AUV systems. By providing the vehicle with the ability to reason about the information gathered by its sensors in real time, the proposed techniques will facilitate adaptive control and autonomous decision making during vehicle deployments. Further Information: http://www.cas.edu.au/content.php/397.html.