Smart integrated sensor networks for the marine environment

Grimaccia, Francesco; Gandelli, A.; Johnstone, Ron; Chiffings, Tony; Zich, R.E.

doi:10.1117/12.638590

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Different from electrolocation, this paper designs an artificial electrocommunication system available for small underwater robots. Underwater communication with a similar working principle has been preliminarily explored in the literature [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39]. However, these studies typically employed bulky commercial instruments to simply prove the communication feasibility or conduct channel characterization in a static environment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A bio-inspired electrocommunication system for small underwater robots

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Weakly electric fishes (Gymnotid and Mormyrid) use an electric field to communicate efficiently (termed electrocommunication) in the turbid waters of confined spaces where other communication modalities fail. Inspired by this biological phenomenon, we design an artificial electrocommunication system for small underwater robots and explore the capabilities of such an underwater robotic communication system. An analytical model for electrocommunication is derived to predict the effect of the key parameters such as electrode distance and emitter current of the system on the communication performance. According to this model, a low-dissipation, and small-sized electrocommunication system is proposed and integrated into a small robotic fish. We characterize the communication performance of the robot in still water, flowing water, water with obstacles and natural water conditions. The results show that underwater robots are able to communicate electrically at a speed of around 1 k baud within about 3 m with a low power consumption (less than 1 W). In addition, we demonstrate that two leader-follower robots successfully achieve motion synchronization through electrocommunication in the three-dimensional underwater space, indicating that this bio-inspired electrocommunication system is a promising setup for the interaction of small underwater robots.

show abstract