NI: NERC-MOST: Development of Multiple Collaborative Unmanned Marine Vehicles for Monitoring and Removing Marine Debris

The marine debris catastrophe is beginning to catch serious attention worldwide due to its severe impacts on environment and ecosystem. This project addresses the need for ocean monitoring and cleaning techniques to reduce the effects of marine litter. The proposed project will provide core technologies necessary for the development of Unmanned Surface Vehicle-linked-Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (USV-linked-UUVs) system to enable these vehicles can work more safely, efficiently and collaboratively. To unleash the full potential of ocean exploration, several scientific boundaries must be pushed, ensuring the efficiency of both USV and UUVs. This research will fill critical technological gaps in robotic design, localization, control and coordination to promote the applications of USV and UUV team for marine monitoring and cleaning tasks. In specific, four important advanced technologies will be developed in this project: (i) design of heterogeneous USV-linked-UUVs system, (ii) dynamic behaviors analysis of USV-linked-UUVs System, (iii) path planning optimization-based collaborative control for USV-UUVs team, and (iv) integrated Robotic Operating System-Mission Orientated Operating Suite (ROS-MOOS) middleware to facilitate the communication between UUVs and USV. Theoretical advancements will proceed alongside with experimental research toward demonstrating the potential of marine robotics to efficiently reduce the marine debris.