Communication and Cooperation for Spherical Underwater Robots by Using Acoustic Transmission

—The application of miniature underwater robots in the marine area is becoming more extensive. Occasionally, the ability of the single miniature underwa- ter robot is limited by its size, conﬁguration, function or propulsion method. At this moment, if a group of robots can work together in a division of labor, that can solve more problems underwater. For autonomous underwater vehi- cles, the support of underwater wireless communication equipment is required to achieve communication and col- laboration. Acoustic communication equipment has gener-ally been used in large underwater vehicles due to its large size and power. This article employs a small acoustic communication module to enable underwater communication in a spherical robot with a diameter of only 45 cm. The fourth-generation spherical underwater robot is exploited as the prototype. The article also veriﬁes the accuracy, efﬁciency Manuscript K. J. Kyri-akopoulos and Editor Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos. This work was supported in part by Research Fund of Chengdu University of Information Technology under Grant KYTZ202107 and Grant KYTZ202108, in part by the Opening Project of International Joint Research Center for Robotics and Intelligence System of Sichuan Province under Grant JQZN2021-001, in part by SPSKAKENHI under Grant 15K2120, and in part by Sichuan Province Science and Technology Planning Project under Grant 2021YFG0187. (Corresponding authors: Linshuai Zhang; Shuxiang Guo.) the proposed