Abstract
Through simulation, this paper evaluates the capabilities of the EcoSUB\(\mu \), a small, low cost Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), to perform emergent and adaptive behaviours for environmental monitoring. It is assumed in realistic environments the vehicles cannot communicate simultaneously, leading to the development of a communication overhead. The limitations of an optical modem are found to be too extensive to conduct a flocking behaviour while an acoustic modem of increased range allows the EcoSUB\(\mu \) to perform the flocking behaviour and locate a maxima, simulating tracking a chemical plume. The performance of large swarms degrades due to the communication overhead, whereas the performance of smaller swarms is comparable to an individual vehicle. The results highlight the heavy reliance of an emergent behaviour on communication and how the limitations of underwater communication mean this behaviour is unlikely to be suitable for the control of an AUV swarm in realistic ocean environments.
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Notes
- 1.
The EcoSUB\(\mu \) development is funded by the Innovate UK project ‘Launch & Recovery of Multiple AUVs from an USV’, Innovate UK Project Ref 102302 http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk/projects?ref=102302 aiming to reduce the dependency of marine science on expensive research ships.
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Lowndes, T.S., Phillips, A.B., Harris, C.A., Rogers, E., Chu, B., Popova, E. (2017). Evaluating the Capabilities of a Flight-Style Swarm AUV to Perform Emergent and Adaptive Behaviours. In: Gao, Y., Fallah, S., Jin, Y., Lekakou, C. (eds) Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems. TAROS 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10454. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64107-2_19
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