A Heterogeneous Robotic Swarm for Long-Term Monitoring of Marine Environments
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LABUST—Laboratory for Underwater Systems and Technologies, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb, Unska 3, Zagreb 10000, Croatia
2
LARICS—Laboratory for Robotics and Intelligent Control Systems, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb, Unska 3, Zagreb 10000, Croatia
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(7), 1388; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9071388
Received: 4 March 2019 / Revised: 20 March 2019 / Accepted: 26 March 2019 / Published: 2 April 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Solutions for Robotic Swarms in Sea Operations)
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.
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Keywords:
marine robotics; swarm; multi-vehicle system; underwater acoustic sensor network; cooperative control; consensus; formation control; acoustic protocol
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MDPI and ACS Style
Lončar, I.; Babić, A.; Arbanas, B.; Vasiljević, G.; Petrović, T.; Bogdan, S.; Mišković, N. A Heterogeneous Robotic Swarm for Long-Term Monitoring of Marine Environments. Appl. Sci. 2019, 9, 1388. https://doi.org/10.3390/app9071388
AMA Style
Lončar I, Babić A, Arbanas B, Vasiljević G, Petrović T, Bogdan S, Mišković N. A Heterogeneous Robotic Swarm for Long-Term Monitoring of Marine Environments. Applied Sciences. 2019; 9(7):1388. https://doi.org/10.3390/app9071388
Chicago/Turabian StyleLončar, Ivan; Babić, Anja; Arbanas, Barbara; Vasiljević, Goran; Petrović, Tamara; Bogdan, Stjepan; Mišković, Nikola. 2019. "A Heterogeneous Robotic Swarm for Long-Term Monitoring of Marine Environments" Appl. Sci. 9, no. 7: 1388. https://doi.org/10.3390/app9071388
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