ENDURUNS: An Integrated and Flexible Approach for Seabed Survey Through Autonomous Mobile Vehicles

• Main Authors: Simone Marini, Nikolla Gjeci, Shashank Govindaraj, Alexandru But, Benjamin Sportich, Ennio Ottaviani, Fausto Pedro García Márquez, Pedro Jose Bernalte Sanchez, Jonas Pedersen, Casper Vetke Clausen, Fantina Madricardo, Fedeirca Foglini, Federico Bonofiglio, Laura Barbieri, Massimiliano Antonini, Yeidy Sorani Montenegro Camacho, Peter Weiss, Kathrin Nowak, Makthoum Peer, Thibaud Gobert, Alessio Turetta, Elias Chatzidouros, Dongik Lee, Dimitris Zarras, Theodore Steriotis, Georgia Charalambopoulou, Thanos Yamas, Mayorkinos Papaelias
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-08-01
• Series: Journal of Marine Science and Engineering
• Subjects: autonomous underwater vehicles; unmanned surface vehicles; seabed survey; habitat mapping; autonomous ocean monitoring
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/8/9/633

The oceans cover more than two-thirds of the planet, representing the vastest part of natural resources. Nevertheless, only a fraction of the ocean depths has been explored. Within this context, this article presents the H2020 ENDURUNS project that describes a novel scientific and technological approach for prolonged underwater autonomous operations of seabed survey activities, either in the deep ocean or in coastal areas. The proposed approach combines a hybrid Autonomous Underwater Vehicle capable of moving using either thrusters or as a sea glider, combined with an Unmanned Surface Vehicle equipped with satellite communication facilities for interaction with a land station. Both vehicles are equipped with energy packs that combine hydrogen fuel cells and Li-ion batteries to provide extended duration of the survey operations. The Unmanned Surface Vehicle employs photovoltaic panels to increase the autonomy of the vehicle. Since these missions generate a large amount of data, both vehicles are equipped with onboard Central Processing units capable of executing data analysis and compression algorithms for the semantic classification and transmission of the acquired data.