Swarm & Networked Systems

This section covers multi-vehicle coordination, communication systems, and operational frameworks for networked subsea operations. As operations scale to multiple vehicles, coordination and communication become critical.

Scope

This section addresses:

• Multi-vehicle coordination — Concepts and frameworks for coordinating multiple vehicles
• Acoustic vs RF vs hybrid comms — Communication options and tradeoffs
• Latency, bandwidth, and reliability — Communication performance characteristics
• Graceful degradation — How systems degrade when communication is lost
• Loss-of-comms behavior — What vehicles do when communication fails

Key Principles

1. Communication is unreliable — Subsea communication is inherently unreliable; systems must be designed accordingly
2. Latency matters — Communication latency affects coordination capability
3. Degradation is inevitable — Systems will lose communication; they must degrade gracefully
4. Autonomy enables coordination — Vehicles must be able to operate autonomously to enable coordination

Topics

• Multi-Vehicle Coordination
• Communication Systems
• Latency & Bandwidth Tradeoffs
• Graceful Degradation
• Loss-of-Comms Behavior