Cooperative line of sight target tracking for heterogeneous unmanned marine vehicle teams: From theory to practice

• We describe an algorithm for target tracking by a team of autonomous marine vehicles.
• A general control architecture for such a team is described.
• Focus is put on tracking an underwater target by a team of autonomous marine vehicles.
• The tracking algorithm was validated in real sea trials.
• In the trials, an acoustic communication link was in the loop.

In this paper we present the principle of Cooperative Line Of Sight Target Tracking (CLOSTT) for Heterogeneous Unmanned Marine Vehicle Teams. Thereby CLOSTT is part of a control architecture developed to coordinate existing single heterogeneous autonomous marine vehicles as a team. Within this control architecture CLOSTT separately offers a solution to the task of following a moving underwater target with a team of unmanned marine vehicles.