Development of a Structural-Functional Approach for Heterogeneous Glider-Type Marine Robotic Complexes’ Group Interaction to Solve Environmental Monitoring and Patrolling Problems

Abstract

Glider-type autonomous underwater vehicles are today one of the most promising areas of marine robotics. This is confirmed by the frequent and remarkable results of various research missions and projects. The cumulative group application of underwater and no less innovative wave gliders can significantly reduce the time of obtaining oceanographic data. Together with wave gliders, one group of such robotic objects can significantly increase the efficiency, time and volume of obtaining oceanographic data. There is big interest in increasing the functionality of such a group. This article presents one of the possible alternatives to increase the functionality of a group of underwater and waveguide hang gliders. We present the process of upgrading the existing design, control algorithms and software of the SHADOW underwater glider, which was developed by the teams of the St. Petersburg State Marine Technical University (SMTU) and Okeanos JSC in order to jointly study the monitoring of underwater potentially dangerous objects with the St. Petersburg State Fire Service EMERCOM of Russia. A structural-functional approach to the group application of underwater and waveguides is also proposed, which is capable of providing oceanographic, meteorological and environmental monitoring data online, based on the developed multilayer system for planning the trajectories of group movement of objects. The results of full-scale sea trials and the developed algorithms are demonstrated.