System Architecture and Communication Infrastructure for the RoboVaaS project

TL;DR

This paper presents RoboVaaS, a cloud-based, on-demand service platform that orchestrates unmanned surface and underwater vehicles to perform quay walls and hull inspections, anti-grounding, and environmental/bathymetry data collection. It integrates an underwater acoustic network (ahoi modems, DESERT, UWPOLLING) with an above-water WiFi network (Mikrotik) and a Node.js-based cloud backend supported by MongoDB and a real-time broker for data delivery. The authors validate the approach through digital twin in-lab trials and a 10-day lake field campaign, reporting end-to-end service execution, network performance, and data-management workflows, while identifying maturity gaps for full industrial deployment. Collectively, the work delivers a comprehensive system architecture, data flows, and field-tested results that establish a baseline for on-demand robotic maritime services and guide future enhancements in reliability, security, and onboard/offshore data handling.

Abstract

Current advancements in waterborne autonomous systems, together with the development of cloud-based service-oriented architectures and the recent availability of low-cost underwater acoustic modems and long-range above water wireless devices, enabled the development of new applications to support ships and port activities. Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) can, for instance, be used to perform bathymetry and environmental data collection tasks to ensure under-keel clearance and to monitor the quality of the water. Similarly, Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) can be deployed to inspect ship hulls and typical port infrastructure elements, such as quay and sheet pilling walls. In this paper we present the complete system deployed for the small-scale demonstrations of the Robotic Vessels as-a-Service (RoboVaaS) project, which introduces an on-demand service-based cloud system that dispatches Unmanned Vehicles (UVs) capable of performing the required service either autonomously or piloted. These vessels are able to interact with sensors deployed in the port and with the shore station through an integrated underwater and above water network. The developed system has been validated through sea trials and showcased through an underwater sensor data collection service. The results of the test presented in this paper provide a proof-of-concept of the system design and indicate its technical feasibility. It also shows the need for further developments for a mature technology allowing on-demand robotic maritime assistance services in real operational scenarios.

Figures (17)

• Figure 1: RoboVaaS services: quay walls inspection (a), ship hull inspection (b), anti-grounding (c), environmental and bathymetry data collection (d).
• Figure 2: System Architecture: Users and System Brokers use the web interface to connect to the Front Server, which in turns redirects all requests, made through interaction with the user interface, to the responsible server. Operators use dedicated software for direct command of the robotic system. The live data is exchanged through , which regulates the access rights to the queues. The continuously changing access rights to the live data are managed by a dedicated server, that oversees the ongoing missions and actors.
• Figure 3: Access Control Scheme for Application: users interacting from the web user interface are allocated temporary queues by the server for listening to live data. In parallel, queues are generated for the operators, whom are also given access keys to write into the robotic system queues, where commands are submitted.
• Figure 4: State machine of the vehicle (a) and sensor node (b) for the UWPOLLING protocol implemented in the DESERT Underwater framework.
• Figure 5: simulation setup: thanks to the very similar physical properties, the Heron has been used for in-lab tests. By abstracting the hardware of the ship, most of the RoboVaaS system components could be cost-effectively tested. Underwater communication is separately simulated and connected to the RoboVaaS system via publicly accessible server.