SUNFISH®: A Human-Portable Exploration AUV for Astrobiology Investigations in Complex 3D Environments

Stone Aerospace is developing the SUNFISH® autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) which addresses many of the challenges of remote, autonomous exploration in unstructured environments such as the Ocean Worlds of the outer Solar System. The descendant of larger AUVs developed at Stone Aerospace (e.g. the NASA-funded DEPTHX, ENDURANCE, and ARTEMIS vehicles), SUNFISH is miniaturized, person-portable, six-degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) hovering vehicle with built-in precision navigation and control, multibeam mapping, imaging, and CTD capabilities. It was designed to be a highly-capable platform for operating in a wide variety of complex 3D spaces, ranging from man-made (e.g. piers) to natural (e.g. reefs, caves, and under ice). Building on these base functionalities, we have developed high-level capabilities for performing simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), exploration, path planning, and precision return home and docking. We describe these capabilities, and present a demonstration in the unstructured lab...