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28 into the centre of the circle. That gives you this LBL system, which is reasonably stable. It doesn’t matter where they are inside the circle because they’ve got GPS to within 4 or 5 m.” He says Newcastle University’s acoustic modem will soon be available in Ultra Short Base Line (USBL) form, which will support a positioning network with only one surface node over a range of around 2 km. “That means we could use the m5 because it can cruise on the surface like an ASV, with its upward- pointing GNSS antenna and its modem underneath broadcasting USBL to the shoal,” Sloane says. What’s more, comparing the position predicted by the INS with the solution calculated by the EKF with the LBL/ USBL information enables the navigation system to calculate the speed and direction of any currents to which the vehicle is subject. The acoustic modems also allow the vehicles to cooperate. Cooperative AI “That means that as a shoal they can know what the local conditions are, and they can modify their programming in real time, which is where the AI comes in,” Sloane says. He adds that they will be able to apply their collective AI to the set of tasks they have been given and, within constraints, change the order in which they do them. One constraint might be the inclusion of a mission-essential, top priority ‘gold’ task, which the AUVs would have to carry out when programmed to do so. Otherwise, they are free to change the sequence in which they perform their tasks if the prevailing conditions make it easier to complete a mission within the energy budget. The team tested the enhanced navigation capability in the sea off Plymouth, south-west England, with six ecoSUB vehicles. “We proved the process and signed that project off in July,” Sloane says. In the meantime, the company has been providing ecoSUBs to early adopters in the UK, mainly universities, although BP now has some m25 models. The UK was the initial focus because the company wanted to be able to support the subs easily wherever they were being operated. For example, at the time of our visit in August, the Scottish Association for Marine Science was operating a μ5 in the icy waters around Svalbard in the Norwegian Sea, sending it close to glaciers to gather data in conditions too risky for people or a larger, costlier vehicle. The NOC has also bought a few as software test vehicles for Autosub programs, Sloane explains. “It is a lot easier for them to develop and test new behaviours such as avoidance protocols in a lake than to use an Autosub with all its support kit and cranes.” Autopilot hardware and remote control Autopilot hardware is centred on a Variscite DART MX-6 system-on-module processor, a powerful device with camera and wi-fi interfaces built in. The DART replaced the Intel Edison processor that was used in the development October/November 2019 | Unmanned Systems Technology Researchers from the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) with an ecoSUBμ5 they are operating near the Arctic island of Svalbard, where it can operate close to glaciers (Courtesy of SAMS) A mission-planning screen from the ecoSUB GUI, with which operators can construct missions by combining programmed autonomous behaviours including various search patterns (Courtesy of ecoSUB Robotics)