High-speed underwater acoustic communication for multi-agent supervised autonomy

Service providers for subsea inspection, maintenance, and repair (IMR) generally utilize remotely operated tethered vehicles (ROVs) to inspect and to intervene on underwater infrastructure. The cost of these operations can be considerable due to the need of deploying a large surface vessel and a highly skilled crew to support the IMR campaign. This work describes a novel multi-agent autonomous system comprising an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and unmanned surface vessel (USV) incorporating a proprietary high-bandwidth acoustic communication system capable of video transmission to the surface with effective data rates in excess of 100 kbps at 2 km. Real-time data stream transmission from the AUV was demonstrated at a depth of 840 m as well as a shallow water test in which the video stream of a World War 2 fighter plane wreck was transmitted to the surface.