Marine Robots for Underwater Surveillance

Abstract

Purpose of Review The paper reviews the role of marine robots, in particular unmanned vehicles, in underwater surveillance, i.e. the control and monitoring of an area of competence aimed at identifying potential threats in support of homeland defence, antiterrorism, force protection and Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD). Recent Findings The paper explores separately robotic missions for identification and classification of threats lying on the seabed (e.g. EOD) and anti-intrusion robotic systems. The current main scientific challenge is identified in terms of enhancing autonomy and team/swarm mission capabilities by improving interoperability among robotic vehicles and providing communication networking capabilities, a non-trivial task, giving the severe limitations in bandwidth and latency of acoustic underwater messaging. Summary The work is intended to be a critical guide to the recent prolific bibliography on the topic, providing pointers to the main recent advancements in the field, and to give also a set of references in terms of mission and stakeholders' requirements (port authorities, coastal guards, navies).

Design and Modeling of an Experimental ROV with Six Degrees of Freedom

“…Knowing the distribution of forces and moments, the control input u can be calculated to be applied to the motors in such a way that the desired control can be generalized forces τ. Since the control forces and moments caused by the thrusters relative to the control inputs are expressed through (7), the vector of control inputs can be obtained in the form:…”

“…This type of underwater vehicle allows one to solve a wide range of tasks: bottom mapping, inspection work, rescue operations, extraction of objects from the bottom, work to ensure oil and gas complex objects (drilling support, inspection of gas pipeline routes, inspection of structures for breakdowns, performing operations with valves and valves), scientific applications, support for diving operations, work to maintain fish farms, archaeological surveys, inspection of urban communications, inspection of ships, etc. The tasks to be solved are constantly expanding, and the fleet of underwater robots is growing rapidly [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. Working with the robots is much cheaper than expensive diving work, despite the fact that the initial investment is quite large, although working with the robots cannot replace the entire range of diving work.…”

Blockchain and Autonomous Vehicles: Recent Advances and Future Directions

“…In recent times, AUVs are progressing towards becoming pervasive tools for oceanography and sampling. The AUVs are programmable, automatic vehicles widely variated in their physical design, making it possible for them to exercise various movements, such as drift, drive or glide through oceans with or without being manned by a staff or crew [54] [55]. The degree of control varies from task to task.…”

“…AUVs are provisioned to sample water columns at oceanic depths, far beyond the human visit. Another vital application is underwater surveillance, which controls and monitors a given area to identify potential threats and perform tasks such as homeland defense, anti-terrorism, and safe disposal of explosives (termed, 'Explosive Ordnance Disposal') [54]. These underwater robotic missions are carried out prudently, ranging from identifying threats to their classification to the multitude of activities for antiintrusion.…”

“…For specific underwater tasks, which cover reasonably large regions, it becomes requisite to have several robotic vehicles working together while collecting data samples from assigned sites and building inferences to take collective/individual actions. Thus, it requires building interoperability capabilities amongst the underwater vehicles and opens up several challenges related to building networking capabilities, communication protocols, distributed design, and communicating interfaces [54]. There are severe limitations in terms of limited bandwidth availability and latency issues involved in acoustic underwater messaging.…”