Squads of Adaptive Robots (SoAR): an architecture for operating heterogeneous fleets of marine robots

Fleets of Marine Autonomous Systems are increasingly utilised for ocean surveying and monitoring, since they provide both spatial and temporal coverage at a significantly lower cost than conventional methods. Facilitating this mode of operation requires further developments in the field of heterogeneous fleet mission planning, control system interoperability and acoustic networking infrastructure. The Squads of Adaptive Robots project is tackling these challenges to bring together a fleet consisting of light weight microAUVs, a high-powered mapping AUV and an Uncrewed Surface Vehicle to efficiently, by utilising a fleet-level intelligent mission planning system, triage and map areas of the seabed. This paper provides an overview of the aspirations and design of the solution.