Team formation and steering algorithms for underwater gliders using acoustic communications

Abstract

In order to take measurements in space and time from the undersampled vast ocean, it is necessary to employ multiple autonomous underwater vehicles, such as gliders, that communicate and coordinate with each other. These vehicles need to form a team in a specific formation, steer through the 3D region of interest, and take application-dependent measurements such as temperature and salinity. In this article, team formation and steering algorithms relying on underwater acoustic communications are proposed in order to enable glider swarming that is robust against ocean currents and acoustic channel impairments (e.g., high propagation and transmission delay, and low communication reliability). Performance of the proposed algorithms is evaluated and compared against existing solutions, which do not rely on underwater communications, using different ocean current models.