Design of Communication and Control for Swarms of Aquatic Surface Drones

Anders Lyhne Christensen, Sancho Oliveira, Octavian Postolache, Maria João de Oliveira, Susana Sargento, Pedro Santana, Luis Nunes, Fernando Velez, Pedro Sebastião, Vasco Costa, Miguel Duarte, Jorge Gomes, Tiago Rodrigues, Fernando Silva

2015

Abstract

The availability of relatively capable and inexpensive hardware components has made it feasible to consider large-scale systems of autonomous aquatic drones for maritime tasks. In this paper, we present the CORATAM and HANCAD projects, which focus on the fundamental challenges related to communication and control in swarms of aquatic drones. We argue for: (i) the adoption of a heterogeneous approach to communication in which a small subset of the drones have long-range communication capabilities while the majority carry only short-range communication hardware, and (ii) the use of decentralized control to facilitate inherent robustness and scalability. A heterogeneous communication system and decentralized control allow for the average drone to be kept relatively simple and therefore inexpensive. To assess the proposed methodology, we are currently building 25 prototype drones from off-the-shelf components. We present the current hardware designs and discuss the results of simulation-based experiments involving swarms of up to 1,000 aquatic drones that successfully patrolled a 20 km-long strip for 24 hours.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Lyhne Christensen A., Oliveira S., Postolache O., João de Oliveira M., Sargento S., Santana P., Nunes L., Velez F., Sebastião P., Costa V., Duarte M., Gomes J., Rodrigues T. and Silva F. (2015). Design of Communication and Control for Swarms of Aquatic Surface Drones . In Proceedings of the International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 2: ICAART, ISBN 978-989-758-074-1, pages 548-555. DOI: 10.5220/0005281705480555

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icaart15,
author={Anders Lyhne Christensen and Sancho Oliveira and Octavian Postolache and Maria João de Oliveira and Susana Sargento and Pedro Santana and Luis Nunes and Fernando Velez and Pedro Sebastião and Vasco Costa and Miguel Duarte and Jorge Gomes and Tiago Rodrigues and Fernando Silva},
title={Design of Communication and Control for Swarms of Aquatic Surface Drones},
booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 2: ICAART,},
year={2015},
pages={548-555},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0005281705480555},
isbn={978-989-758-074-1},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 2: ICAART,
TI - Design of Communication and Control for Swarms of Aquatic Surface Drones
SN - 978-989-758-074-1
AU - Lyhne Christensen A.
AU - Oliveira S.
AU - Postolache O.
AU - João de Oliveira M.
AU - Sargento S.
AU - Santana P.
AU - Nunes L.
AU - Velez F.
AU - Sebastião P.
AU - Costa V.
AU - Duarte M.
AU - Gomes J.
AU - Rodrigues T.
AU - Silva F.
PY - 2015
SP - 548
EP - 555
DO - 10.5220/0005281705480555