INTEGER TECHNOLOGIES LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: HR001121S0007-24

Description

Integer Technologies LLC proposes to develop a set of operational digital twins that run in parallel both onboard and offboard an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) called the Remote Operational Monitoring Unit Leveraging UUV Simulation, or “ROMULUS.” ROMULUS is designed to provide the UUV Operator with continuous high-fidelity situational awareness of what their UUVs are doing, even during times of degraded communications with the vehicle. Digital twin is an emerging area of technology research where virtual representations allow emulation of physical systems by a continuous fusion of analytical models with sensor data from the physical asset. The core technical problem we are solving is how to periodically update a UUV system model that resides off the vehicle (e.g., at an ashore command center or operator console) with state information from the vehicle that is encoded in a compact manner that enables information of higher density to be transmitted over acoustic communications channels. By overcoming this technical challenge, we can develop novel use cases for UUVs where the situational awareness and predictive capability of the digital twin enables operators to accurately forecast the performance of their UUVs towards mission goals and adapt if needed. In addition to situational awareness, our objective is that integrated diagnostic and data analytics tools will enable the UUV Operator to use ROMULUS to remotely infer unobservable state information about the vehicle and the environment. The ultimate goal of ROMULUS is to give UUV Operators the tools they need to continuously assess the performance of teams of UUVs towards mission goals and dynamically adapt those vehicles’ mission plans. We believe that this technology will enable new levels of unmanned undersea system adaptability that will foster operator trust for longer-duration missions and support multi-vehicle or system-of-systems collaborative affects.  This capability provides a critical aid for decision-making and a foundation for networking the UUV within a larger operational context, like Mosaic Warfare.