Marine Operations with the SWORDFISH Autonomous Surface

Abstract

Abstract—This paper describes the design and development of the Swordfish Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) system. The work focuses the sensors, actuators, communications and C4I of an unmanned vehicle for marine operations. SWORDFISH is an autonomous surface vehicle used as the central communications link between air, undersea, and terrestrial robotic vehicles of a network centric operation. It is used as a test bed platform for deployment and testing of advanced control and operational concepts for multi-vehicles systems. This new unmanned marine vehicle was done in the context of the PISCIS project. The PISCIS project concerns the development, test and evaluation of new vehicles and new concepts of operation for networked vehicle systems in oceanographic data collection. The PISCIS system includes two autonomous underwater vehicles, the Swordfish ASV, an acoustic navigation system, acoustic and radio communications and a distributed command and control system.