Multi-agent Communication-constrained Underwater Mapping
Enabling multiple underwater vehicles to collaboratively map or search environments while taking into account the strict communication constraints inherent to the underwater domain.
Multi-agent Underwater Inspection
The ocean and underwater environments/structures are very large. The use of multiple autonomous agents working as a team has the potential to dramatically increase efficiency when inspecting or searching these environments/structures. Multi-agent coordination is a significant field or research in robotics and decades of researchers have studied these topics. However, the marine environment presents unique and challenges to multi-agent coordination. We are interested in addressing these challenges.
Communication Constrained Coordination
Multi-agent coordination requires at least a minimum of communication between agents. The properties of the underwater environment significantly constrain the amount of data that can be sent between these agents. Typical throughput via acoustic underwater communications is on the order of hundreds or a few thousands of bits per second. For comparison, typical above-water communications via wifi are on the order of millions or billions of bits per second. We are investigating methods to enable cooperative multi-agent operations while taking these constraints into account.