Cooperative Unmanned Aerial and Surface Vehicles for Extended Coverage in Maritime Environments

Maritime operations, such as ship hull inspections, infrastructure assessments, and rapid response to emergencies, often expose humans to hazardous environments. The deployment of unmanned vehicles offers a potential solution to mitigate risks and reduce operational costs in such scenarios. Collabor...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	IEEE access Vol. 12; pp. 9206 - 9219
Main Authors:	Santos, Matheus C., Bartlett, Ben, Schneider, Vincent E., Brádaigh, Fiachra Ó., Blanck, Benjamin, Santos, Phillipe C., Trslic, Petar, Riordan, James, Dooly, Gerard
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Piscataway The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE) 2024 IEEE
Subjects:	autonomous landing Autonomous underwater vehicles cooperative systems Emergency response Ground stations Hazardous areas Ship hulls Surface vehicles UAV Unmanned aerial vehicles unmanned surface vehicles Unmanned vehicles USV
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Maritime operations, such as ship hull inspections, infrastructure assessments, and rapid response to emergencies, often expose humans to hazardous environments. The deployment of unmanned vehicles offers a potential solution to mitigate risks and reduce operational costs in such scenarios. Collaborative efforts between Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) can enhance mission endurance and portability. This paper introduces a cooperative UAV-USV system designed to expand the operational coverage area. It leverages off-the-shelf satellite-based technology to establish robust communication links between UAVs, USVs, and the ground station. This connection facilitates the development of an autonomous launch and recovery system, relying on GPS and visual servoing. Furthermore, the system incorporates a Battery Hot Swap-system (BHS) on the USV, allowing the UAV to resume its mission within 3 minutes. The effectiveness of this proposed solution was demonstrated through successful inspection trials conducted at the port of Hamburg, Germany.
ISSN:	2169-3536 2169-3536
DOI:	10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3353046