Autonomous surface vessel for search and rescue operation

Abstract

Search and rescue operation is performed to save human life, for example during natural disasters, unfortunate incidents on the land, in the deepwater, or lakes. There were incidents happened to the search and rescue crew during the operation although they were well trained. A new method using robotic technology is important to reduce the crew's risk during operations. This research proposed a development of an autonomous surface vessel for search and rescue operations for deepwater applications. The proposed autonomous surface vessel is equipped with a global positioning system (GPS) and underwater sensor to search for the victims, black box, debris, or other evidence on the surface and underwater. The vessel was designed with monitoring and control via radio frequency wireless communication. The autonomous surface vessel prototype was developed and tested successfully with the telemetry at the ground station. The ground station acts as the control centre of the overall system. Results showed the vessel successfully operated autonomously. The operator at the ground station was able to monitor the sensor data and control the vessel's manoeuvre according to the created path. The telemetry coverage to monitor the water surroundings and control the vessel's manoeuvre was around 100 meters.

Exploring Autonomous and Remotely Operated Vehicles in Offshore Structure Inspections

“…In the last 20 years, various organisations including educational institutions, universities, industries, and military bodies have undertaken significant efforts to create autonomous surface vehicles for a range of purposes. ASVs have been utilised in different applications, such as search and rescue operations [100], seismic surveys [101], structural health monitoring [87,102], and asset management of offshore facilities [103].…”

Use of the geospatial technologies and its implications in the maritime transport and logistics

“…Degree four: Fully autonomous ship: The operating system of the ship is able to make decisions and determine actions by itself." [9] Literature on autonomous vessels presents various type of prototypes with various degrees of autonomy (older prototypes tend to be less autonomous and newer prototypes tend to be fully autonomous) [10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. One study [17] reviews many prototypes and projects developed by scholars or private companies (60 prototypes of unmanned vessels are listed and classified by the degree of autonomy).…”

A remote-controlled global navigation satellite system based rover for accurate video-assisted cadastral surveys

“…Several scientific works deal with autonomous ground vehicles (AGV) equipped with GNSS receivers, applied to different application scenarios [14]- [16]. For instance, Moeller et al [17] proposed an autonomous navigation system for precision farming applications.…”