SWARMs

Smart and Networking UnderWAter Robots in

Cooperation Meshes

IONU DRGHICI, Software Developer

Teamnet Group

Background
In the last years, the underwater environment is in full ascent regarding
the development of remote controlled robots and autonomous robots for
military and civil applications.
Underwater environment is at the beginning of journey regarding the
development of robots, but the lack of legal framework does not help the
progress.

Solution

At the moment, there are robots of

different
dimensions
and
various
characteristics in use. In order to
collaborate in specific tasks of military and
civil applications a unified control
station is required.

A solution that solves this issue is under

development as part of an EU project
named SWARMs (Smart and Networking
UnderWAter Robots in Cooperation
Meshes).

SWARMs Project

SWARMs
Title: Smart and Networking UnderWAter
Robots in Cooperation Meshes
Acronym: SWAMRs
Project identifier: ECSEL-2014-662107

Start date of project: 01/07/2015

End date of project: 30/06/2018
Duration of project in months: 36

Founder: H2020-EU.2.1.1.7. ECSEL

Consortium: 30 partners from 10
countries

SWARMs - Goal
Expand the use of underwater and surface
vehicles (AUV Autonomous Underwater
Vehicle, ROV Remotely Operated
underwater Vehicle, USV Unmanned
Surface Vehicle) to facilitate the conception,
planning, execution of operations and
missions
in a collaborative maritime
environment.

This will reduce the operational costs,

increase the safety of tasks and of involved
individuals, and expand the offshore sector.

Approach
Design and develop an integrated platform
for a new generation of autonomous
maritime and underwater operations.
A set of software/hardware components,
adopted and incorporated into the current
generation of maritime and underwater
vehicles in order to improve:
Autonomy
Robustness
Cost-effectiveness
Reliability

Demonstrators & Scenarios

SWARMs achievements will be demonstrated in three field testing sites:
Canary Islands, Spain
Constanta, Romania
Hovringen, Norway
Different scenarios and use cases:
Corrosion prevention in offshore installations
Monitoring of chemical pollution
Detection, inspection and tracking of plumes
Berm building
Seabed Mapping

MMT (Mission Management Tool)

MMT can be located inside the Command
and Control Station (CCS) on shore or on
a vessel.
MMT is responsible for generation of
missions, assign tasks to robots, and
supervision of the mission.

A human operator can interact with the

system from MMT.

Middleware
The middleware is responsible for receiving,
process, store and disseminate messages/data
between MMT and the AUVs/ROVs/USVs.
The distribution of middleware spans across the
CCS, communication nodes and also some
modules onboard of the vehicles. The satellite and
buoy provides communication between robot
vehicles and CCS.

Communication
For the overwater communication
the usage of a standard RF network
provides a high bandwidth for data.
The underwater acoustic modems
provides a low bandwidth of 100
kpbs over 100 m at 50 m depth for
AUVs (Autonomous Underwater
Vehicle), and the length of cables in
ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicle)
limits the operation area.

Underwater networks
All of the communication between the underwater robots will be directed
through the middleware, which offers interfacing elements to the
communication system.
Messages related only to safety issues (e.g. similar to Traffic Alert and
Collision Avoidance System - TCAS) can be transmitted directly between
robots with a notification to the MMT through the middleware.
Regarding the underwater network, the medium and high frequency modems
divide the communications between MMT and robots into two categories: MF
for telemetry, data and commands and HF for video and images.

Conclusion
Collaborative work of underwater robots will determine the main
economic activity in offshore missions in the near future.
The difficulty of underwater activity is proportional with the depth of the
mission, the purpose of swarm of robots is to replace the human activity
in this dangerous environment.
A legal framework for maritime robots is required.

Thank you!
www.teamnet.ro
www.swarms.eu