Characterization of Highly Dynamic Coastal Environments, Employing Teams of Heterogeneous Vehicles: A Holistic Case Study

Collecting, analyzing and characterizing data from highly dynamic oceanic environments can be logistically taxing and costly, specially when done over long intervals of time using traditional manned methods. This usually discourages attempts at obtaining data of high spatial and temporal resolution. Nevertheless, through the use of teams of networked autonomous vehicles, these costs can be reduced and data collection and post-processing methods can be ameliorated. The work presented follows multi-vehicle operational scenarios, in a coastal environment, during large scale joint venture exercise with the Portuguese Navy, with the intent of collecting high spatio-temporal resolution data, over the course of a 2 week campaign, yielding promising results.