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. 2017 Aug 5;17(8):1802.
doi: 10.3390/s17081802.

An Optimized, Data Distribution Service-Based Solution for Reliable Data Exchange Among Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Jesús Rodríguez-Molina  1 , Sonia Bilbao  2 , Belén Martínez  3 , Mirgita Frasheri  4 , Baran Cürüklü  5
Affiliations

An Optimized, Data Distribution Service-Based Solution for Reliable Data Exchange Among Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Jesús Rodríguez-Molina et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Major challenges are presented when managing a large number of heterogeneous vehicles that have to communicate underwater in order to complete a global mission in a cooperative manner. In this kind of application domain, sending data through the environment presents issues that surpass the ones found in other overwater, distributed, cyber-physical systems (i.e., low bandwidth, unreliable transport medium, data representation and hardware high heterogeneity). This manuscript presents a Publish/Subscribe-based semantic middleware solution for unreliable scenarios and vehicle interoperability across cooperative and heterogeneous autonomous vehicles. The middleware relies on different iterations of the Data Distribution Service (DDS) software standard and their combined work between autonomous maritime vehicles and a control entity. It also uses several components with different functionalities deemed as mandatory for a semantic middleware architecture oriented to maritime operations (device and service registration, context awareness, access to the application layer) where other technologies are also interweaved with middleware (wireless communications, acoustic networks). Implementation details and test results, both in a laboratory and a deployment scenario, have been provided as a way to assess the quality of the system and its satisfactory performance.

Keywords: autonomous underwater vehicles; cyber-physical systems; middleware.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Location of middleware in a scenario with AUVs.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Location of middleware in the system and its DDS components.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Functional and physical components of the proposed middleware architecture and other related components of the SWARMs.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Middleware architecture used in SWARMs.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Local tests done with the middleware components.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Data transfer architecture.
Figure 7
Figure 7
ODROID appearance and interfaces, as depicted in [36].
Figure 8
Figure 8
Middleware components used in the tests done with Windows Labview and Odroid.
Figure 9
Figure 9
ODROID packet publication, as represented by Wireshark.
Figure 10
Figure 10
LabVIEW packet publication, as represented by Wireshark.
Figure 11
Figure 11
Round Trip Time for data deliveries.
Figure 12
Figure 12
Deployment of elements during testing activities.
Figure 13
Figure 13
Timespan values between receptions of Status Vector information.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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