Test mission off Leixões Harbor

In order to test and validate current-day operational concepts for remotely executed missions, we did a day-long operation off Leixões Harbor.

The vehicle was deployed to the water (inside the Harbor) in the early morning. All commands and monitoring was done via a satellite link with the vehicle and synchronous shore-side simulation that improved situation awareness of the operators during the mission.

Mission started before sunrise inside the harbor.
Mission started in the early morning before sun rise and ended only at night.

The AUV was then taken to the outside of the harbor and the operation was done remotely from shore via a Web API (and satellite link) that has been developed under the Endurance project. Moreover, a portable AIS receiver was used to monitor ship traffic from a small boat and from the shore.

The operation was successful in that it was possible to validate the use of shore-side simulation to improve situation awareness of the operators for controlling a single vehicle. However, new developments are required for allowing long-endurance missions such as automatic replanning in the event of potential collisions, alerts to the operators in case of errors, etc.

Sunset prior to recovery at the harbor entrance.
Sunset prior to recovery at the harbor entrance.