Abstract

This paper proposes a dual navigation configuration consisting in an Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) and an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) in mutual supported guided navigation for long term, high persistence remote deployment. Research and experimentation has already been made by some authors [11], providing interesting results related to cooperative surface-underwater common navigation schema. Nevertheless some aspects have not been thoroughly considered, as long term high persistence deployments based in environmental energy gathering. Based on previous work of some of the author of this paper [1], focused in the study of the feasibility of conducting long term remote operation in tandem navigation, this paper shows the advances that have been made in terms of a navigation scheme based on a meeting-points strategy. To achieve these goals, a collaborative configuration considering a solar powered/wind-sailing ASV in combination with a low cost AUV is proposed. With both vehicles adopting a common referenced guided surface-underwater navigation as it is projected, this combination is expected to be able to face missions when unexpected environmental conditions will be present on the area of operation. Underwater hydro-acoustic communications and positioning referencing is considered for mutual guided navigation. The final goal is to obtain a robust, stable, fail-proof and practical set of vehicles with the additional advantage of being low cost.