The Flying Fish Persistent Ocean Surveillance Platform

Abstract

The Flying Fish platform is an ocean, environmental monitoring buoy that repositions as an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS), maintaining a pre-set watch circle. To operate in the open ocean, the platform must be robust to moderate sea state conditions and must function unattended thus fully-autonomously. Our concept was conceived as an alternate solution to surface boat designs, avoiding the hydrodynamic drag of ocean waves and currents while in flight. Over the first project year, we developed and repeatedly demonstrated our prototype vehicle's ability to autonomously "hop" across a GPS-defined "watch circle", providing initial validation of the unified UAS-buoy (air/sea vehicle) persistent ocean monitoring concept. This paper will describe the vehicle design and performance characterization through simulation and flight-testing and provide insight to the Phase II vehicle which will operate for long periods with a balanced energy budget.

BathyBoat: An Autonomous Surface Vessel for Stand-alone Survey and Underwater Vehicle Network Supervision

“…July/August 2010 Volume 44 Number 4 unmanned aerial vehicles (Meadows et al, 2009). Two of the major components of autonomous navigation are cooperative navigation between multiple vehicles and navigation when sensor data are restricted or inaccessible.…”

Autonomous Guidance and Control of the Flying Fish Ocean Surveillance Platform

“…Initial airworthiness testing, primary piloted flight experiments, and the controller tuning strategy were documented previously. 1,5 It is appropriated here to briefly review these initial control tuning procedures and to provide the previously unpublished data from that period, showing the piloted flight data that guided the takeoff controller design and an example of the earliest autonomous flights of Flying Fish. American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics All of the early Flying Fish testing was conducted in local freshwater lakes (Fig.…”

A Reconfigurable Flight Management System for Small-Scale Unmanned Air Systems

“…The Flying Fish seaplane UAS aimed at persistent ocean surveillance was the first platform to be fully-automated with support from our flight management software. 5,6,7 This platform requires a system capable of autonomously initiating and executing multiple flight "hops" across a predefined watch circle, and is currently being extended to support long-duration deployment with solar energy harvesting. The SolarBubbles student team at the University of Michigan has also adopted our flight management system, with the goal of approaching the longest-duration continuous flights with a lightweight (under 15 pound) airframe and solar recharge capability.…”