MRI: Development of an Underwater Mobile Testbed Using a Software-Defined Networking Architecture

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This project, developing one of the first Software Defined Network (SDN)-based underwater mobile testbeds to support the operation of marine robot fleets, aims to address a technological bottleneck, that of achieving integrated communications and navigation underwater. A fleet of Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASV)s are directed to follow sampling Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) to provide acoustic and Magnetic Induction (MI) communication over relatively short ranges. Launching the following effort thrusts: Acoustic & MI Communication; Control of ASVs & UAVs; SDN architecture; and Integration and evaluation.The testbed will be designed to achieve cost-effectiveness, transferability, flexibility, and scalability and is expected to become a stable instrument that is accessible by multiple research communities that include ocean acoustics, communication and networking, robotics, oceanography and environmental sciences. The hybrid acoustic/MI communication will be used to achieve reliability and high data rates across the mobile network for ASVs and AUVs, while smooth autonomy of the fleet would be ensured by cooperative localization and real-time data transfer among the ASV-AUV pairs. The testbed is expected to enable various research directions, including underwater swarming, deep-learning-based underwater joint networking and navigation, and integrated oil spill responses.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.