• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.53-57
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• 2009

Unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) conduct various missions while exchanging information with control centers. Maritime security, coastal surveillance, and sea surface and undersea inspections are included in the important missions of USVs. To carry out these missions, large amounts of information are required from sensors, such as cameras, radars, and sonars. High bandwidth wireless communication is necessary to send this information to the control center in real time. In general, USVs are made using small boats. The motions of small boats are easily influenced by sea waves and the magnitude of changes in the attitude is large and the period of the changes is short in comparison with large ships. Thus, the direction of an antenna beam pattern for a wireless communication system in a USV can change rapidly, and with a large magnitude. In addition, since the reflection of electromagnetic waves on the sea surface is not negligible, the effect of multipath noises on the wireless communication system must be considered carefully. There are also several other elements that negatively affect wireless communication systems in USVs. This paper presents the wireless communication environment to be considered in the design and implementation of wide bandwidth communication systems for USVs. Short test results for wireless communication on the sea are also given.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.7 no.3 s.18
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• pp.59-68
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• 2004

Unmanned surface vehicles(USVs) have been developed for special operations in foreign navies. These will be employed to conduct critical missions including inspection, coast guard, ISR, fire protection, precision strike, mine interception warfare and antisubmarine warfare. It is also known the USVs will be deployed at the front line of the network-centric warfare to replace the manned naval operations. The unmanned operation can, thus, minimize unnecessary risk to personnel and enhance the success probability for the imposed mission. In this research, the USVs which are under operation and development in foreign navies are investigated. Based on this, an USV with $7\~10m$ of length and 10ton of weight for the Korean Navy which can be deployed near the Northern Limit Line(NLL), is proposed.

• Advances in robotics research
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.161-182
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• 2018

This paper proposes a novel receding horizon control (RHC) algorithm for formation control of a swarm of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) using particle swarm optimization (PSO). The proposed control algorithm provides the coordinated path tracking of multi-agent USVs while preventing collisions and considering external disturbances such as ocean currents. A three degrees-of-freedom kinematic model of the USV is used for the RHC with guaranteed stability and convergence by incorporating a sequential Monte Carlo (SMC)-based particle initialization. An ocean current model-based estimator is designed to compensate for the effect of ocean currents on the USVs. This method is compared with the PSO-based RHC algorithms to demonstrate the performance of the formation control and the collision avoidance in the presence of ocean currents through numerical simulations.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.159-165
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• 2015

Motion control schemes are generally classified into three categories (point stabilization, trajectory tracking, and path following). This paper deals with the problem which is associated with the initial deployment of a group of Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USVs) and corresponding point stabilization. To keep the formation of a group of USVs, it is necessary to set the relationship between each vehicle. A forcing functions such as potential fields are designed to keep the formation and a graph Laplacian is used to represent the connectivity between vehicle. In case of fixed topology of the graph representing the communication between the vehicles, the graph Laplacian is assumed constant. However the graph topologies are allowed to change as the vehicles move, and the system dynamics become discontinuous in nature because the graph Laplacian changes as time passes. To check the stability in the stage of deployment, the system is modeled with Kronecker algebra notation. Filippov's calculus of differential equations with discontinuous right hand sides is then used to formally characterize the behavior of USVs. The stability of the system is analyzed with Lyapunov's stability theory and LaSalle's invariance principle, and the validity is shown by checking the variation of state norm.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.40-46
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• 2018

In order to successfully detect and identify underwater targets located on the seabed, unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) typically acquire acoustic signals with a side-scan sonar device and reconstruct information about the target from the processed images. As the quality of the side-scan sonar images acquired by USVs depends on the environment and operating parameters, using modeling and simulation techniques to design side-scan sonar devices can help optimize the reconstruction of the sonar images. In this work, we study a side-scan sonar design for use in USVs, that takes the movement of the platform into account. First, we constructed a simulated seabed environment with underwater targets, and specified the maneuvering conditions and sonar systems. We then generated the acoustic signals from the simulated environment using the sonar equation. Finally, we successfully imaged the simulated seabed environment using simple signal processing. Our results can be used to derive USV side-scan sonar design parameters, predict the resulting sonar images in various conditions, and as a basis for determining the optimal sonar parameters of the system.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.340-350
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• 2021

This paper proposes a decision support model for USVs to improve the accuracy of collision avoidance decision-making. It is formed by Navigation Safety Domain (NSD) and domain-based Collision Risk Index (CRI), capable of determining the collision stage and risk between multiple ships. The NSD is composed of a warning domain and a forbidden domain, which is constructed under the constraints of COLREGs (International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea). The proposed domain based CRI takes the radius of NSD in various encounter situations as threshold parameters. It is found that the value of collision risk in any directions can be calculated, including actual value and risk threshold. A catamaran USV and 6 given vessels are taken as study objects to validate the proposed model. It is found that the judgment of collision stage is accurate and the azimuth range of risk exists can be detected, hence the ships can take direct and effective collision avoidance measures. According to the relation between the actual value of CRI and risk threshold, the decision support rules are summarized, and the specific terms of COLREGs to be followed in each encounter situation are given.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.586-595
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• 2022

In this paper, we propose a formation control algorithm for multi-USVs according to COLREGs. First, we applied the Dynamic Window Approach algorithm that can reflect the kinematic characteristics for the path movement of USVs. Then, we propose a virtual structure-based virtual leader-follower method that applies the advantages of leader-follower and virtual structure methods among conventional formation control algorithms for stability. Next, we proposed a collision avoidance algorithm according to all COLREGs when encountering an opposing ship by adding COLREGs situational conditions to the virtual leader, and finally confirmed the feasibility of the proposed method through simulation.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.1-10
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• 2022

Defense fields widely operate unmanned systems to lower vulnerability and enhance combat effectiveness. In the navy, swarm unmanned surface vehicles(USVs) form a cluster within communication range, share situational awareness information among the USVs, and cooperate with them to conduct military missions. This paper proposes an interface system, i.e., Interface Adapter System(IAS), to achieve inter-USV and intra-USV interoperability. We focus on the mission planning subsystem(MPS) for interoperability, which is the core subsystem of the USV to decide courses of action such as automatic path generation and weapon assignments. The central role of the proposed system is to exchange interface data between MPSs and other subsystems in real-time. To this end, we analyzed the operational requirements of the MPS and identified interface messages. Then we developed the IAS using the distributed real-time middleware. As experiments, we conducted several integration tests at swarm USVs simulation environment and measured delay time and loss ratio of interface messages. We expect that the proposed IAS successfully provides bridge roles between the mission planning system and other subsystems.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.620-626
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• 2019

With the development of robot technology, the expectation of autonomous mission operations has increased, and the research on robot control architectures and mission planners has continued. A scalable and robust control architecture is required for unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) to perform a variety of tasks, such as surveillance, reconnaissance, and search and rescue operations, in unstructured and time-varying maritime environments. In this paper, we propose a robot control architecture along with a new utility function that can be extended to various applications for USVs. Also, an additional structure is proposed to reflect the operator's command and improve the performance of the autonomous mission. The proposed architecture was developed using a robot operating system (ROS), and the performance and feasibility of the architecture were verified through simulations.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.87-99
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• 2015

In recent years, the development of autonomous surface vehicles has been a field of increasing research interest. There are two major areas in this field: control theory and path planning. This study focuses on path planning, and two objectives are discussed: path planning for Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) and implementation of path planning in a real map. In this paper, satellite thermal images are converted into binary images which are used as the maps for the Finite Angle $A^*$ algorithm ($FAA^*$), an advanced $A^*$ algorithm that is used to determine safer and suboptimal paths for USVs. To plan a collision-free path, the algorithm proposed in this article considers the dimensions of surface vehicles. Furthermore, the turning ability of a surface vehicle is also considered, and a constraint condition is introduced to improve the quality of the path planning algorithm, which makes the traveled path smoother. This study also shows a path planning experiment performed on a real satellite thermal image, and the path planning results can be used by an USV.