A Heterogeneous Robotic Swarm for Long-Term Monitoring of Marine Environments

Abstract

This paper describes an underwater acoustic sensor network consisting of a heterogeneous robotic swarm used for long-term monitoring of underwater environments. The swarm consists of a large number of underwater robots acting as sensor nodes with limited movement capabilities, and a few surface robots aiding them in accomplishing underwater monitoring scenarios. Main interactions between two types of robots include underwater sensor deployment and relocation, energy and data exchange, and acoustic localisation aiding. Hardware capabilities of each vehicle are described in detail. Inter-agent communication is split into two layers: surface and underwater communication. Surface communication utilises wireless communication using WiFi routers configured for decentralised routing. Underwater communication mainly uses acoustic communication which, when used within a large swarm, poses a challenging task because of high probability of interference and data loss. The acoustic communication protocol used to prevent these issues is presented in detail. Finally, more complex functionalities of the robotic swarm are presented, including several results from real-life experiments.

A Novel Paradigm for Underwater Monitoring Using Mobile Sensor Networks

“…The monitoring paradigm proposed in this paper makes use of the aPad and aMussel agent types. A detailed description of the functionalities and agent interactions featuring the aMussel and aPad robots ( Figure 1 ), as well as the subCULTron system as a whole, is presented in [ 31 ]. Here, an overview is given to provide necessary context.…”

A Survey on Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks: Requirements, Taxonomy, Recent Advances, and Open Research Challenges

“…Long-term marine environmental monitoring can also be implemented using a combination of different types of agents and communication. The research team [ 105 ] conducted experiments at Biograd Na Moru, Croatia by combining Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASVs), highly mobile artificial fish, and artificial mussels for data collection purposes.…”

Autonomous Vehicles Mapping Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia

“…Laboratory for Underwater Systems and Technologies (LABUST) has participated in many research and technical projects that pushed the boundary of the state-of theart in marine robotics and remote sensing applications in numerous scientific fields. For example, in the projects TRITON [17], ADRIAS [18] and BLUEMED [19,20] they have used marine robotics as a remote sensing tool for maritime archaeology; marine ecology in the projects subCULTron [21] and e-UReady4OS [22,23]; Maritime safety in the MORUS project [24]; Maritime inspection in the HEKTOR project; Promotion of diver safety and augmenting their performance in the CADDY [25] and ADRIATIC [26] projects An overview of the geographical distribution of the sites where LABUST's marine robots were used for remote sensing is shown in Figure 3. The long-term research goal of the authors is to develop the current unmanned survey/inspection missions by marine vehicles into missions that are performed by the marine vehicles in a fully autonomous manner controlled by artificial intelligence.…”

“…The long-term research goal of the authors is to develop the current unmanned survey/inspection missions by marine vehicles into missions that are performed by the marine vehicles in a fully autonomous manner controlled by artificial intelligence. This of course means that online sensor data processing must be developed to enable the vehicle to perceive its environment (as published in [27][28][29]), as well as mission and path planning algorithms, so that the behaviour of the vehicle is responsive to the new information about its environment as published in [21,[30][31][32][33]. For successful, fully autonomous reconnaissance missions it is of utmost importance that the marine vessels estimate their position accurately, as published by the authors in [22,34,35].…”

“…This is one of the many application-dependent versions of the so-called Dynamic Positioning Platforms (PlaDyPos or H2Omni-X), called Dynamic Bathymetric Imaging Platform (PlaDyBath), which is shown in Figure 4. The surface vehicle was developed by the Laboratory for Underwater Systems and Technologies (LABUST), Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb (UNIZG-FER), Croatia, and is used for a variety of applications, from support to underwater archeology [20], as a dive monitoring platform, which enables the navigation and monitoring of divers from the surface [36], as a communication router between underwater and aerial vehicles [37], which is used in ASV swarms for long-term monitoring of the underwater environment [21], for mapping (extraction of photomosaic and bathymetry) of shallow water areas [38] and for mine countermeasures [39].…”