Xiroi II, an Evolved ASV Platform for Marine Multirobot Operations

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Marine Engineering
• Oceanography

Background:

• Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASVs) offer flexible platforms for marine research.
• Effective coordination between marine robots is crucial for complex tasks.
• Acoustic Communication Links (ACLs) between Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and surface stations can be unreliable.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present the design, development, and application of a modular ASV.
• To integrate an open-source Robot-Operating-System (ROS)-based control architecture for enhanced navigation.
• To develop and test a Marine Multirobot System (MMRS) coordination strategy to improve ACL quality between ASVs and AUVs.

Main Methods:

• Designed and developed a modular ASV platform.
• Integrated an open-source ROS-based control architecture for diverse navigation behaviors.
• Implemented and tested a novel MMRS coordination strategy focused on proximity maintenance between ASVs and AUVs.

Main Results:

• The ASV demonstrated modularity and flexibility for various marine tasks.
• The ROS-based architecture enabled a wide range of navigation behaviors for data acquisition (surveying, mapping, habitat characterization).
• The MMRS coordination strategy significantly improved the quality of the Acoustic Communication Link (ACL) between the ASV and AUV.

Conclusions:

• The developed ASV platform, integrated with ROS, is a capable tool for marine environmental data acquisition.
• The MMRS coordination strategy effectively enhances communication reliability between marine robots.
• The system's successful real-world testing validates its practical utility in marine robotic applications.