Squads of Adaptive Robots (SoAR)

Soar专注于通过将不同类型的自主水下航行器(AUV)和无人水面航行器船队联网，实现海洋机器人使用的根本性转变，这些船队由能够进行自适应任务规划的船队级自动引擎进行监督。现有的单一高功率车辆与昂贵的支持船和大量的人的模式目前是有限数量的运营商的保留地，不容易扩展以满足海上风电行业的新需求。特别是，最终用户正在寻找最具成本效益的手段来观察环境，对事故作出反应，以及监测运行中的、退役的和遭到破坏的建筑物。这种对大型飞行器的依赖是由支持高级导航仪器的有效载荷和功率要求驱动的。该项目的方法是通过开发使能技术来运行不同类型的AUV/USV网络来克服这一点。这将通过开发一种新类别的通信软件和支持开放接口联网协议的导航仪器来实现。虽然这些能力将在NOC和ecoSUB AUV上进行测试和演示，但目标是提供开放的接口，包括ROS，以实现在广泛车辆上的实施。结合这些技术，将导致更低的成本和更高效的操作，使资产和传感器能够更好地分配。这将促进以具有成本效益的方式提供持续观测、精确检查和应急能力。具体地说，这将带来与目前最先进的AUV相比的巨大性能改进，在当前最先进的AUV中，单个AUV根据自己有限的本地来源数据做出决策。这也将使微型AUV的性能发生阶段性变化，使它们能够以与车辆类似的精度和标准进行操作，成本高出一个数量级。该项目包括一系列硬件、软件和系统创新，最终实现多车辆协作、自动驾驶操作的演示。一些硬件改进，特别是新的小型混合导航装置设计，将在项目期间开发和验证，以便以后部署。

SoAR is focused on delivering a fundamental shift in the use of marine robotics through the networking of heterogeneous fleets of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) and uncrewed surface vehicles overseen by a fleet level autonomy engine capable of adaptive mission planning. The existing paradigm of a single high-power vehicle with expensive support vessel and large numbers of people is currently the preserve of a limited number of operators and does not scale easily to meet the emerging needs of the offshore wind sector. In particular end-users are looking for the most cost-effective means to observe the environment, respond to incidents, as well as monitoring both operational, decommissioned and wrecked structures. This dependence on large vehicles is driven by the payload and power requirements to support high-grade navigation instruments.The project's approach is to overcome this by developing enabling technology for the operation of heterogenous AUV/USV networks. This will be achieved through both the development of software, a new class of communications and navigational instrument, enabling open interface networking protocols. While these capabilities will be trialled and demonstrated on both NOC and ecoSUB AUVs, the objective is to deliver open interfacing, including ROS to enable implementation on a wide range of vehicles.Combined, these technologies will result in less expensive and more efficient operations, enabling better allocation of assets and sensors. This will promote cost-effective delivery of sustained observation, precision inspection and emergency response capabilities. Specifically, this will deliver vast performance improvements over current state-of-the-art, where an individual AUV makes decisions based on its own limited locally sourced data. This will also enable a step change in micro-AUV performance allowing them to operate with similar accuracy and standards of vehicles an order of magnitude of cost higher.The project includes a range of hardware, software and systems innovations culminating in a multi-vehicle demonstration of collaborative, autonomy-driven operation. Some of the hardware improvements, in particular the new small-scale hybrid navigator device design, will be developed and validated during the project for later deployment.