Marine Robots for Underwater Surveillance

TLDR

Marine robots are used for underwater surveillance to detect threats for homeland defense, antiterrorism, force protection, and EOD, but advancing autonomy, swarm capabilities, interoperability, and communication remains a major challenge due to acoustic bandwidth and latency limits. This review critically surveys recent literature on unmanned marine robots for underwater surveillance, offering guidance and references for mission planning and stakeholder requirements such as port authorities, coastal guards, and navies. The authors conduct a comprehensive literature review of unmanned marine vehicles and their deployment in underwater surveillance missions. The review identifies distinct robotic missions for seabed threat identification and classification, including EOD, and for anti‑intrusion operations.

Abstract

Abstract Purpose of Review The paper reviews the role of marine robots, in particular unmanned vehicles, in underwater surveillance, i.e. the control and monitoring of an area of competence aimed at identifying potential threats in support of homeland defence, antiterrorism, force protection and Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD). Recent Findings The paper explores separately robotic missions for identification and classification of threats lying on the seabed (e.g. EOD) and anti-intrusion robotic systems. The current main scientific challenge is identified in terms of enhancing autonomy and team/swarm mission capabilities by improving interoperability among robotic vehicles and providing communication networking capabilities, a non-trivial task, giving the severe limitations in bandwidth and latency of acoustic underwater messaging. Summary The work is intended to be a critical guide to the recent prolific bibliography on the topic, providing pointers to the main recent advancements in the field, and to give also a set of references in terms of mission and stakeholders’ requirements (port authorities, coastal guards, navies).