autonomous underwater vehicles
control engineering computing
mobile robots
path planning
MCM chain
collaborating underwater vehicles
companion underwater robot
identification event
intervention event
mine countermeasures chain
multivehicle cooperation
reacquisition event
underwater navigation method
unmanned robotic platforms
Robot sensing systems
Sonar
Sonar navigation
Three-dimensional displays
Vehicles
This paper presents the results of multi-national
collaboration during the sea trial held in the coastal waters of La Spezia,
Italy, in the period 17 Oct. - 07 Nov. 2012. The trial was performed as one of
the objectives of the program which has a goal to achieve the entire chain of
Mine Countermeasures (MCM) using unmanned, robotic platforms. The focus of activities
in this sea trial was to perform the last events of the mission: reacquisition,
identification and intervention using a pair of collaborating underwater
vehicles. The trial's objectives were to combine the expertise and robotic
systems from different partners and achieve a mission of precise guiding of an
inexpensive underwater vehicle to an underwater target using the navigation
suite and control system of a more capable underwater vehicle. The objectives
were accomplished and the researchers' opinion is that the extension to
multi-vehicle cooperation (one leader guiding several agents, or followers) is
feasible given the test results.