Vehicle and Mission Control of Single and Multiple Autonomous Marine Robots

The last decade has witnessed tremendous progress in the development of marine technologies that provide scientists with advanced equipment and methods for ocean exploration and exploitation. Recent advances in marine robotics, sensors, computers, communications, and information systems are being applied to develop sophisticated technologies that will lead to safer, faster, and far more efficient ways of exploring the ocean frontier, especially in hazardous conditions. As part of this trend, there has been a surge of interest worldwide in the development of autonomous marine robots capable of roaming the oceans freely, collecting data at the surface of the ocean and underwater on an unprecedented scale. Representative examples are autonomous surface craft (ASC) and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). The mission scenarios envisioned call for the control of single or multiple AUVs acting in cooperation to execute challenging tasks without close supervision of human operators. Furthermore, it should be possible for users who are not necessarily familiar with the technical details of marine robot development to do mission programming and mission execution tasks. Thus the need to push the development of methods for reliable vehicle and mission control of single and multiple autonomous marine robots.