Background
Protecting and monitoring Australia’s maritime jurisdiction which covers 13.6 million square kilometres (or 4% of global ocean areas) requires a sustained presence.
Autonomous vehicles will play a key part in providing and supporting maritime surveillance capability, as they can be programmed to perform a variety of tasks and require minimal operator input.
A group of autonomous vehicles swarming, presents both a significant threat and opportunity in the underwater domain. There is a need to strengthen protection against attacks or disruption from swarms of uncrewed vehicles, and to establish how to utilise underwater swarms for surveillance.
New, autonomous technologies must be developed to address future challenges in the maritime domain, freeing up defence personnel and assets to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the Australian Defence Force. There is a growing trend towards supporting or replacing high-value crewed vehicles with low-cost autonomous or uncrewed vehicles that can be deployed in greater numbers, at lower cost, and at greater speed.
The situation
The underwater domain is a very opaque and harsh environment that is constantly evolving and difficult to penetrate.
This creates design problems ranging from communication limitations, to the deployment, sustainment and recovery of infrastructure. Currently, conventional sensor and communication systems that are used above the surface – or even in space – are not very effective in the underwater domain.
The development of uncrewed systems with limited autonomy has enabled the ability to detect and find underwater objects in deep trenches by getting closer to the source. However, when these uncrewed systems are fitted with control strategies and a decision-making system, they provide a scalable capability that requires little to no supervision from humans to complete tasks. Therefore, providing value for money when compared to having a crewed ship continuously performing manual survey sweeps or repetitive tasks.
The solution
The Defence Trailblazer has brought Saab Australia and the University of Adelaide together under the Industry Research Program (IRP). The IRP provides an opportunity for PhD and Masters students to work on higher degree by research (HDR) projects that have been developed in consultation with industry partners and leading academics.
Through the IRP, a PhD candidate from the University of Adelaide, Chung Fang, is now working at Saab Australia to research how large-scale swarms can assist difficult underwater missions with their ability to cover a larger sea area, sense more objects, and do this at a lower cost than traditional crewed assets.
Under this project, Chung will explore the use of autonomous swarms to create an underwater communications network using decentralised decision support systems, with acoustic signal detection using machine learning. In the maritime environment, one particular advantage of using swarms of uncrewed vehicles is the ability to exploit multiple signal pathways, which can potentially improve sensing performance (through both redundancy and sensor fusion). However, there are also challenges associated with the communications and control requirements for these types of multi-agent systems.
Chung’s journey began with a splash, as a graduate with SA Water working on the Adelaide Desalination Project after completing a Bachelors of Mechanical Engineering. After that project, Chung used his skills in central Queensland on practical engineering in coal and gas. Following several years practicing as an engineer, Chung returned to a learning environment with a focus on the defence industry, aligning his interests with Saab. Chung hopes to be able to provide another stepping stone towards a transparent ocean with impact over Defence’s technological endeavours.
Saab’s global experience with underwater systems aligns with the strategic priorities of the Australian Defence Force, and their pursuit of RAS-AI capability. Directly linking Saab’s expertise in developing autonomous underwater systems with Australia’s research capabilities will fast track innovation and ensure Australia develops a technological advantage.
Outcomes
The goal of the project is to improve the detection of underwater objects and communications by using a swarm of collaborative autonomous systems to increase the communication bandwidth and range in the underwater space. |
Chung will research how a swarm can be utilised to achieve more with their acoustic communication systems through transmitting at different times to get more power onto a communications receiver or target. This could include sensing data coming in and feeding information back to a control strategy/decision support system to prioritise the list of actions/mission.
This project aims to:
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Chung is focussing on identifying research gaps, guided by Saab Australia, and also investigating modelling approaches to improve signal processing methods.
The results of this research will be dual-use. Along with initial defence applications, we expect to be able to share the technology for environmental purposes. For example, autonomous monitoring for marine preservation, and to detect invasive species of starfish.
Saab Australia is committed to building a skilled workforce for the Australian defence sector and developing a talent pipeline in an emerging technology area. With multiple interns and graduates working on similar technology including signal processing, control theory and tracking, this IRP scholarship opportunity will be one piece of the puzzle to build out an entire system.
For more information on industry workforce programs visit: dtb.solutions
