Development of an intelligent fuzzy obstacle avoidance system using SONAR modeling and simulation

Response time to a threat or incident for coastline security is an area needing improvement. Currently, the U.S. Coast Guard is tasked with monitoring and responding to threats in coastal and port environments using boats or planes, and SCUBA divers. This can significantly hinder the response time to an incident. A solution to this problem is to use autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to continuously monitor a port. The AUV must be able to navigate the environment without colliding into objects for it to operate effectively. Therefore, an obstacle avoidance system (OAS) is essential to the activity of the AUV. This thesis describes a systematic approach to characterize the OAS performance in terms of environments, obstacles, SONAR configuration and signal processing methods via modeling and simulation. A fuzzy logic based OAS is created using the simulation. Subsequent testing of the OAS demonstrates its effectiveness in unknown environments.