Experiments in multi-vehicle operations: The Rapid Environmental Picture Atlantic exercise 2014

The paper describes the Rapid Environmental Picture Atlantic exercise 2014 (REP14-Atlantic), with special focus on the experiments with autonomous underwater, surface and air vehicles, and discusses how large scale experimentation in operational environments is contributing to advancing the state of the art in networked vehicle systems. REP14-Atlantic was also focused on collaborative experimentation to advance interoperability, underwater communications and disruption/delay tolerant networking (DTN) capabilities, automation and cooperation of unmanned underwater, surface and aerial vehicles. In addition some of these vehicles had deliberative planning capabilities onboard for unprecedented levels of autonomy. Deliberative planning techniques were also used to support coordinated planning and execution control of multiple vehicles.