Reliability is especially important for autonomousunderwater vehicles (AUVs) that have made the transitionto operational use. However, in contrast to the unmannedair vehicle community, there has been little sharing in theopen literature of detailed fault histories of commercialAUVs from which an assessment of their reliability can bemade. In this paper, we declare the fault history of twoREMUS-100 AUVs manufactured by Hydroid Inc. andoperated by the Center for Coastal Marine Sciences atCalifornia Polytechnic State University. The data setcontains the faults and incidents recorded from 186missions between 5 November 2003 and 14 January 2009.Interaction between the faults or incidents with the AUVand the operating environment complicate matters whenit comes to estimating probability of loss. Through aformal process of eliciting expert judgment the paperprovides optimistic and pessimistic estimates of loss ofthe REMUS vehicles in open water, coastal, under sea iceand under ice shelf operations. Vehicle-specific riskmitigation methods are explored, and recommendationsmade for reviewing the fault history data usingbehavioural aggregation through interaction among agroup of experts rather than simple mathematicalaggregation as in this paper.
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