In this thesis, the use of highly mobile sonar platforms is investigated for the purpose of acoustically classifying compact objects on or below the seabed. The extension of existing strategies, including synthetic aperture sonar and conventional imaging, are explored within the context of the buried object problem. In particular, the need to employ low frequencies for seabed penetration is shown to have a significant impact both due to the relative length of the characteristic scattering mechanisms and due to the interface effects on the target scattering. New sonar strategies are also shown that exploit incoherent wide apertures that are created by multiple sonar platforms. For example, target shape can be inverted by mapping the scattered field from the target with a team of receiver vehicles. A single sonar-adaptive sonar platform is shown to have the ability to perform hunting and classification tasks more efficiently than its pre-programmed counterpart. While the monostatic sonar platform is often dominated by the source component, the bistatic or passive receiver platform behavior is controlled by the target response. The sonar-adaptive platform trajectory, however, can result in the platform finishing its classification effort out of position to complete further tasks.
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