Execution Level Java Software and Hardware for the NPS Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

This is a NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL MONTEREY CA report procured by the Pentagon and made available for public release. It has been reproduced in the best form available to the Pentagon. It is not spiral-bound, but rather assembled with Velobinding in a soft, white linen cover. The Storming Media report number is A309604. The abstract provided by the Pentagon follows: Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have a great potential use for the United States Marine Corps and United States Navy. When performing amphibious operations, underwater mines present a danger for he forces going ashore. The use of underwater vehicles for the detection of this mines and signaling to the Amphibious Ready Group is very attractive. With advancements in hardware and object oriented language technology, more complicated and robust software can be developed. The Naval Postgraduate School Center for AUV Research has been designing, building, operating, and researching AUVs since 1987. Each generation of vehicles has provided substantially increased in operational capabilities and level of sophistication in the hardware and software respectively. With the advancement in real-time computer languages support, object oriented technology, and cost efficient and high performance hardware, this thesis lays the foundations to develop a software system for the execution level using the Java language. We look into the Java Real-Time specifications and extension to familiarize with the capabilities of Java for real-time support, and study Java boards and its application for embedded real-time systems. We developed an object-oriented design for the execution level control software and implemented the design in Java. A testing phase is still under work.