Title:  Motion Tomorgraphy Performed by Underwater Mobile Sensor Networks

Committee: 

Dr. Zhang, Edwards, Advisor

Dr. Howard, Chair

Dr. Vela

Abstract: The objective of the proposed research is to develop a tomographic approach to creating a map of the flow field using underwater mobile sensor networks. The motion of underwater mobile sensing agents is affected by ambient flow, and due to imperfect knowledge of flow, the actual trajectory of an agent deviates from the predicted trajectory. The difference between the actual and predicted trajectories is referred to as the motion-integration error. Our approach, referred to as motion tomography, creates a spatial map of flow based on the motion-integration errors. The first goal of the proposed research is to estimate the unknown nonlinear trajectories of sensing agents. The second is to incorporate a parametric flow model so we create a map of the flow field by estimating parameters of the flow model through motion tomography. The third is to develop an approach to distributed implementation of motion tomography for a sensor network whose individual members estimate a flow field given partial information shared among their neighbors. The proposed work will be validated through simulations and experiments.