This chapter presents experimental and theoretical issues related to the cooperative path-following of unmanned marine vehicles (UMVs) focusing on the application of vehicle-following and methodological aspects regarding the design of suitable metrics for performance evaluation of the proposed guidance techniques. Unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), thanks to their position at the air-sea interface, can play a key role in the networks of heterogeneous manned/unmanned air, ground and marine platforms that characterize the next-century scenarios of environmental monitoring, border surveillance, warfare and defence applications. Indeed, they can act as communication nodes connecting radio frequency networks in air and acoustic ones undersea, monitoring ocean and atmosphere dynamics as well as surface and underwater intrusions. In particular, USVs are naturally seen as a part of flotillas of heterogeneous vehicles executing large-scale surveys and supporting rapid environmental assessment (REA), and an increasing number of prototype vehicles have been developed for science, bathymetric mapping, defence and general robotics research.

Chapter Contents:

• 10.1 Introduction
• 10.2 Background
• 10.2.1 Unmanned surface vehicles: research and scientific prototypes
• 10.2.2 Task classification
• 10.2.3 Path-following
• 10.2.4 Experiments in cooperative and coordinate control of UMVs
• 10.3 System architecture
• 10.4 Vehicle-following: path-tracking system design
• 10.4.1 Virtual target-based path-following system design
• 10.4.1.1 Kinematics modelling
• 10.4.1.2 Kinematics guidance
• 10.4.1.3 Heuristics
• 10.4.2 Range control design
• 10.5 Experimental set-up
• 10.5.1 Vehicles
• 10.5.1.1 Charlie USV
• 10.5.1.2 ALANIS dual-mode vessel
• 10.5.2 System integration
• 10.6 Experimental results
• 10.6.1 GPS performance validation
• 10.6.2 Concept validation experiments
• 10.6.3 Repeatable experiments and performance metrics definition
• 10.7 Conclusions
• Acknowledgements
• References

Inspec keywords: path planning; mobile robots; marine vehicles; remotely operated vehicles

Other keywords: REA; air-sea interface; border surveillance; unmanned marine vehicles; UMV; unmanned surface vehicles; environmental monitoring; guidance techniques; USV; radio frequency networks; cooperative path-following; rapid environmental assessment; heterogeneous vehicles; communication nodes; vehicle-following

Subjects: Mobile robots; Spatial variables control; Marine system control; Telerobotics