Publications

Organizations

Publications

This page is meant to be a storehouse for publications that reflect activities of interest to AUVAC and its members. If you have publications that should be added to this list please let us know and we will include them.

Automated Fault Diagnosis for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

April 30, 2013 via – IEEE OES

Abstract

This paper reports our results in using a discrete fault diagnosis system, Livingstone 2 (L2), on-board an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), Autosub 6000. Due to the difficulty of communicating between an AUV and its operators, AUVs can benefit particularly from increased autonomy, of which fault diagnosis is a part. However, they are also restricted in their power consumption. We show that a discrete diagnosis system can detect and identify a number of faults that would threaten the health of an AUV, while also being sufficiently lightweight computationally to be deployed on-board the vehicle. Since AUVs also often have their missions designed just before deployment in response to data from previous missions, a diagnosis system that monitors the software as well as the hardware of the system is also very useful. We show how a software diagnosis model can be built automatically that can be integrated with the hardware model to diagnose the complete system. We show empirically that on Autosub 6000 this allows us to diagnose real vehicle faults that could potentially lead to the loss of the vehicle.

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Law and Ethics for Autonomous Weapon Systems Why a Ban Won’t Work and How the Laws of War Can

April 9, 2013 via – Hoover Institue

Public debate is heating up over the future development of autonomous weapon systems.1 Some concerned critics portray that future, often invoking science-fiction imagery, as a plain choice between a world in which those systems are banned outright and a world of legal void and ethical collapse on the battlefield.2 Yet an outright ban on autonomous weapon systems, even if it could be made effective, trades whatever risks autonomous weapon systems might pose in war for the real, if less visible, risk of failing to develop forms of automation that might make the use of force more precise and less harmful for civilians caught near it. Grounded in a more realistic assessment of technology—acknowledging what is known and what is yet unknown—as well as the interests of the many international and domestic actors involved, this paper outlines a practical alternative: the gradual evolution of codes of conduct based on traditional legal and ethical principles governing weapons and warfare.

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An Aqueous Rechargeable Lithium Battery Using Coated Li Metal as Anode

March 7, 2013 via – Nature

New energy industry including electric vehicles and large-scale energy storage in smart grids requires energy storage systems of good safety, high reliability, high energy density and low cost. Here a coated Li metal is used as anode for an aqueous rechargeable lithium battery (ARLB) combining LiMn2O4 as cathode and 0.5 mol l21 Li2SO4 aqueous solution as electrolyte. Due to the ‘‘cross-over’’ effect of Li1 ions in the coating, this ARLB delivers an output voltage of about 4.0 V, a big breakthrough of the theoretic stable window of water, 1.229 V. Its cycling is very excellent with Coulomb efficiency of 100% except in the first cycle. Its energy density can be 446 Whkg21, about 80% higher than that for traditional lithium ion battery. Its power efficiency can be above 95%. Furthermore, its cost is low and safety is much reliable. It provides another chemistry for post lithium ion batteries.

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