Coordinated control of multiple autonomous underwater vehicle system

This paper explores the problem of coordinated control of multiple autonomous underwater vehicle system (MAUVS) in the real-world tasks such as environmental exploration and oceanographic sampling. These tasks involve solving a distributed multi-agent planning problem in which the actions of underwater vehicles are tightly coupled. A distributed control architecture MOOS-IvP is applied to the MAUVS. In this approach, fully distributed control of underwater vehicles is realized and behavior-based control strategy is used to ensure a timely reaction of the vehicles in complex and dynamic environment. The architecture is further extended with market-based coordination strategy to tackle the problem of task level cooperation of MAUVS in task execution. It is shown in this paper that the integration of market based coordination strategy and MOOS-IvP architecture can enable the MAUVS to work efficiently in tasks require both loosely-coupled and tightly coupled cooperation.