Cyber-physical framework for early integration of autonomous maritime capabilities

The increasing demand for more self-governed assistance in maritime activities is leading ocean engineering research projects to combine diverse autonomous capabilities developed at geographically-dispersed locations. Availability of such capabilities as well as experiments in water is a critical issue that can seriously impact on the project milestones. The ability to perform verification and validation at an initial integration stage of maritime capabilities while they are still physically located at the partner's site can reduce significantly costs and risks. This paper proposes an early integration framework for autonomous capabilities of maritime vehicles by means of system and context simulation (including emulation of maritime vehicles and operational environment). This makes interaction between the computational and physical process become crucial as in cyber-physical systems. The framework proposed allows project patterns to pre-verify and pre-validate requirements before the system is physically integrated. This paper presents a review of the research context, and the autonomous maritime capabilities to be integrated. An illustrative case study of simulation and trials carried out on cooperative maritime navigation is also presented.