The United States faces decisions requiring information about the oceans in vastly expanded scales of time and space and from oceanic sectors not accessible with the suite of tools now used by scientists and engineers. Advances in guidance and control, communications, sensors, and other technologies for undersea vehicles can provide an opportunity to understand the oceans' influence on the energy and chemical balance that sustains humankind and to manage and deliver resources from and beneath the sea. This book assesses the state of undersea vehicle technology and opportunities for vehicle applications in science and industry. It provides guidance about vehicle subsystem development priorities and describes how national research can be focused most effectively.

There is an increasing range of applications in which a robot has to operate in large unstructured and uncertain environments - including military cross country missions, fire fighting, construction, nuclear plant inspections, inspecting and repairing subsea structures, assembling space stations, as well as in intelligent automobiles. Uncertainty dominates the problem domain for intelligent autonomous vehicles (IAVs) through sensing the environment and vehicle state, interpreting the data, assessing the situation, adapting to changes in the environment or tasking, replanning, navigation and piloting. IFAC, recognising the industrial, technical and economic significance of IAV research, established an International Working Party to promote research and dissemination of results in IAV systems. The IAV-93 Southampton Workshop and these resulting proceedings exemplify the vitality and significant progress made by leading IAV researchers worldwide.