1. Towards Targeted Reliability Oceans 2025 Theme 8 WP8.4
Gwyn Griffiths and Mario Brito
National Oceanography Centre, Southampton
2008 Moorings Workshop
Is there common ground between people working on moorings and those working on improving the reliability of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles?

2. Fimbul Ice Sheet, Antarctica
Nick Millard

3. Inquiry following loss of Autosub2
“The Board has recognised the competence and commitment of the NOC AUV team; they have a high level of understanding of the importance of reliability and have employed sound reliability principles to influence their design decisions. However, they have not employed any formal systems reliability analysis methods. The Board believe this to be a major shortfall.”

4. Recommendations following loss of Autosub2
NERC (or representatives) should define risk acceptance criteria
AUV development team should implement formal risk and reliability management systems
AUV development team should provide evidence of reliability achievement
Full report available:
Strut, J. (editor), Report of the inquiry into the loss of Autosub2 under the Fimbulisen. NOCS Research and Consultancy Report: pdf at

5. Synopsis
Introduction to Targeted Reliability in a marine science context
Risk Management Process-AUV being used with Autosub
Informing the process
Detailed engineering and operational fault logs
Engineering and statistical follow-up
The use of Expert Judgement
Moorings
What might a Risk Management Process look like?
Example issues

6. Risk Management Process-AUV
Start
e.g. P(loss)<20%

7. Campaign requirements, Dr Jenkins (BAS) for Pine Island Glacier, Antarctica Feb. 2009
60 km open water missions to 200, 600, 1000 m depths, close to ice front.
3 x 60 km sub-ice-shelf missions to 600 m depth, in outer half of cavity.
3 x 120 km sub-ice-shelf missions to 1000 m depth, to the "minimum headroom" limit of the cavity
Minimum
Desired
Sea ice may well be present in the area, beneath which Autosub3 would need to travel to reach the ice front.

8. How might we predict probability of loss?*
Part A - Gather fault history, document human error and all incidents with the AUV
Part B - Set out the key features and risks of the operating environment
We postulate that combining Parts A and B cannot be done through scientific methods. Addressing Part A alone has been controversial.
* Estimated as cause of ~60% of US military UAV faults/incidents by Tvaryanas et al. (2005)

9. Part A: Example Autosub3 fault log entries

10. Autosub Engineering mitigation examples
Replace wet-mateable connectors with penetrators - prior experience of intermittent connection under pressure.
Autosub2 mission 313 Amundsen Sea

11. Part B. Eliciting Expert Judgement
Set out the Issues
Select the Experts
Clearly Define the Issues
Train the Experts
Elicit the Judgements
Analyze and Aggregate the Results
Complete Analysis and Write-up
Otway, H. and von Winterfeldt, D., Expert judgement in risk analysis and management: Process, context, and pitfalls. Risk Analysis, 12(1): 83–93.

12. EEJ example for the fault history of Autosub3
Ten AUV practitioners from Australia, Canada, USA from academia, research, commercial, military backgrounds.
Given the set of facts on all faults and incidents with Autosub3 throughout its life to date we seek to predict the probability of loss of the vehicle in four operating environments: > Open water > Coastal > Sea ice present > Under an ice sheet
In the course of evaluating each fault log entry, the expert is asked to assess the following question: “What is the probability of loss of the vehicle in the given environment X given fault/incident Y?”

13. Your estimates for Autosub3 Mission 384
Weights 1-5

14. Experts’ estimates for Autosub3 Mission 384
Weights 1-5

15. Cumulative frequency statistics
Open Water
Coastal
Sea Ice
Shelf Ice
Upper Q.
.026
.037
.17
.40
Median
.018
.020
.088
Lower Q.
.0085
.0083
.045
.072

16. Autosub Statistical (procedural) example
Only two missions beyond 250km, one of which failed, hence large step.
Operating procedure for under ice: Each mission has ‘open water’ 25km segment before committing under ice.
Kaplan-Meier method for estimating probability of survival with distance for all Autosub3 missions to date. Prevalence of faults leading to ‘infant mortality’ using GG’s judgement.

17. Estimated probability of loss
Minimum mission set, no sea ice in front of glacier P(loss) = 9%
Minimum mission set + 30km of sea ice in front of glacier P(loss) = 16%
Desired mission set with no sea ice in front of glacier
P(loss) = 24%
Desired mission set + 30km of sea ice in front of glacier
P(loss) = 30%
Based on Autosub3 history to end of March Will be updated after Terschelling June proving trials.

18. Risk and Reliability: A new service to the NERC marine science community
Part of Oceans2025 Technology Work Package on Risk and Reliability
Mario Brito - (awaiting) PhD in software reliability
Access to engineering specialists in the Underwater Systems Lab.
Early discussions on PAP mooring-related problems have already taken place.
For no-fee consultations on risk and reliability issues for NERC marine science, contact either: Mario Brito or Gwyn Griffiths

19. Example - Flooded Glider, April 2008
Establish root cause of glider partially flooding with ~4 litres of water while on a tethered dockside post incident-free 3-month deployment.
Depth 0 to 7 m
1 min
Pressure reduction 9.5 to 6.0 in Hg

20. Systematic Fault Tree Analysis
CTD
Establish actual cause or assign probabilities. Do NOT jump to conclusions!
Stern tube
Leak
‘O’ rings
Chance events
Pressure port
Ammonite flooded
Vacuum plug
Failure routes
Pressure tubes separated
Li battery vented
Tie-rod cross threaded
Pressure tubes not fully butted
Tapered ring in wrong order

21. The root cause: Assembly error
Courtesy Peter Stevenson
For no-fee consultations on risk and reliability issues, contact either: Mario Brito or Gwyn Griffiths

22. Glass buoyancy failure: WHOI VEX Mooring Array in ca
Glass buoyancy failure: WHOI VEX Mooring Array in ca. 5000m Western Atlantic.
Where can I find quantitative:
Failure rates?
Any difference in failure rates between brands e.g. Benthos, Vitrovex?
The major causes of failure?
What’s worse and why, time at depth or depth cycling?

23. Acoustic release failure: WHOI VEX Mooring Array in ca
Acoustic release failure: WHOI VEX Mooring Array in ca. 5000m Western Atlantic.
Batch of EG&G releases had improperly machined release mechanisms. Below 2000m, compression was such that the mechanism would never release.
Example of a common mode, human error.
Recovery using Isis ROV, April 2003.

24. Work programme for 2008 Analyze and write up Autosub3 Expert Judgement
Work with Autosub3 team on 2008 trials and risk management for 2009 Antarctic cruise
How do we incorporate quantitatively sea ice and vessel characteristics?
Paper for IPY Conference, St. Petersburg July 2008.
Work with Autosub6000 team on Markov chain approach to stages of reliability and risk.
The reliability of deep ocean glass spheres.
Factors affecting the reliability of the PAP moorings
Related to EuroSITES project and Oceans propose to instrument a test mooring to establish in situ performance.
Discuss way forward for interaction with Rapid-Watch with NERC/Coordinator/Scientists

25. Conclusions
From open literature searches, AUV community lags the UAV community in analysis of incident and fault data. We should be more proactive, e.g. use of wikis, blogs, list servers …
Recording fault and incident data, and sharing outcomes is important for the community as a whole
Controversy still surrounds attempts to model statistically AUV faults, and more so, and the use of expert judgement to estimate probability of loss from fault history.
We need to do more to engage with ocean engineers working on moorings, landers etc.