Development of a mobile robot group for coastal monitoring

In Russian Federation rich oil and half of all gas reserves are distributed along the sea shelves. Severe weather conditions, frequent storms and intense sea waves, complicate exploring and mining of new shelf deposits. Therefore nowadays stationary automated systems are used for monitoring the environment in the shelf zone of the Sea of Okhotsk near Sakhalin Island. But they provide data only for specific areas of operation. Such restrictions can be removed by using groups of remotely controlled mobile robots. Moreover, mobile vehicles should be able to operate under any weather conditions. This paper summarizes the research results of the development and creation of efficient chassis designs for coastal areas of Sakhalin Island and adjacent waters. The technique for choosing vehicle design parameters and assessing the efficiency of the system as a whole is given. Data on physical and mechanical characteristics of soil and gravel bases in the coastal zone were used for estimating vehicles' cross-country ability. To create a multi-agent coastal monitoring system we intend to use several ground, underwater and overwater robots able to exchange information in real time. We give an outline of a mobile robot group operation, the group being composed of ground, underwater and overwater robots. The use of mobile robots for performing the tasks mentioned above has the following advantages: expansion of the working area achieved by allocating the robots; highly probable accomplishment of the task due to the possibility of redistribution of targets among group members; the ability to take measurements at several locations simultaneously.