2015-09-01 to 2017-03-31

The project concerns the development and demonstration at sea of a networked vehicle system for persistent communications and data collection in remote oceanic areas. The system is composed of a long endurance autonomous surface vehicle (ASV), long endurance autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), long range unmanned air vehicles (UAV), helikites, and control stations. The ASV is both a communications hotspot and a docking base (for AUVs), operating 24/7 in remote ocean areas. The ASV supports smart routing protocols for direct communications, via persistent UAV relays, or delayed data transfer to control stations. The control stations provide advanced planning and execution control capabilities, as well as dissemination of data. The system supports inter-operability protocols to allow expansion to vehicles from third parties. The project is organized into 6 work-packages: 1: Project management and systems engineering; 2: Communications and inter-operability; 3: Unmanned vehicle systems; 4: Land/ship control stations; 5: System integration and testing; and, 6: Demonstration at sea. The project builds on technological, scientific and operational experience of a consortium of FEUP (leader), IPMA, and Portuguese Navy from Portugal, and AMOS from Norway.