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JAMSTEC has operated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) for scientific survey of seabed mineral resources. Conventionally, it is difficult for one support vessel to track plural AUVs in one operation. However, it takes a long time for one AUV to survey a large target area. To solve this problem JAMSTEC has developed an autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) with MHI. The vehicle instead of the support vessel, autonomously tracks AUV(s) and monitors its progress, enabling the simultaneous operation of multiple AUVs and thereby the survey of a larger target area within a given period of time. An important role of the ASV is to relay underwater communication and aerial communication because the underwater communication range is very small. ASV tracks AUV autonomously to keep the acoustic communication, and send AUV information to the support vessel by using radio waves.

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