An approach to route underwater mobile robots under continuous squad rotation

Multiple cooperative vehicle systems hold great promise for use in large-scale oceanographic operations due to ability of high-resolution surveying in both time and space. Multi-objective missions of long-duration require underwater robots to recharge their batteries periodically by docking to the specialized underwater bases (resurfacing in case of solar batteries). Furthermore, it should be taken into account, that the real world underwater vehicle systems are partially self-contained and could be subjected to any malfunctions and unforeseen events. Thus, it is a problem of considerable practical interest to effectively route the group of vehicles under continuous rotation. We propose a dynamic rendezvous point-selection scheme based on pre-estimated vehicle rotation cycle and an evolutionary path planner to route the group of robots ensuring well-timed accomplishment of all tasks and simultaneous arrival of vehicles at their selected rendezvous destination.