Deep-Sea Underwater Cooperative Operation of Manned/Unmanned Submersible and Surface Vehicles for Different Application Scenarios

In this paper, we propose three cooperative operational modes of manned and unmanned submersibles for a range of different deep-sea application scenarios. For large-scale exploration, a lander or an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) is paired with one or more autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), while the liberated research vessel R/V can transport the manned submersible to another area for diving operations. When manned submersibles and AUVs perform small-scale accurate measurements, the research vessel R/V supports both submersible types for diving operations and has a positioning and communication time allocation mechanism for cooperative operations. Through the analysis of the operating efficiency of different modes, we found that the cooperative operational mode based on the pure research vessel R/V is suitable for local small-scale accurate detection, and the cooperative operational mode based on the USV/lander system is suitable for large-scale and long-distance underwater operations.