Coordination of multiple transmedium unmanned vehicles for maritime search-and-rescue support, with legal and safety interlocks preserving human authority over occupied craft.
A method coordinates a swarm of transmedium drones to support maritime search and rescue. The swarm cooperatively searches an area across air and water, detects and tracks a vessel or person in distress, illuminates or marks the position, and relays the position and status to a crewed coastguard or border authority over a communications link. An explicit interlock prohibits any autonomous interception, boarding, or tow of an occupied or crewed craft by the swarm; such actions are reserved for, and handed off to, crewed authorities such as a national coastguard, border force, or the competent authority of the relevant jurisdiction. The method is configured to respect maritime safety-of-life and non-refoulement principles: the swarm assists detection, marking, and relay and does not itself intercept, tow, or redirect occupied craft. Roles such as searcher, tracker, illuminator, and relay are assigned and re-assigned among swarm members, with the occupied-craft interlock enforced at the swarm-coordination level so it cannot be overridden by individual-vehicle autonomy.
Maritime search and rescue benefits from many cooperating sensors over a wide and variable air-and-water environment. Drone swarms and multi-robot search are known, as are single-drone SAR aids that drop flotation or relay video. However, applying autonomy to occupied craft at sea raises acute safety and legal issues. Autonomous interception, boarding, redirection, or tow of a craft carrying people can endanger life and conflict with the international duty to render assistance and to preserve safety of life at sea, and with non-refoulement obligations. Known swarm and SAR systems do not encode, at the swarm-coordination level, a hard prohibition on autonomous interception or tow of occupied craft together with a mandatory hand-off of such actions to crewed authorities. There is a real risk that capable transmedium swarms could be configured to act against occupied craft without human authority. There remains a need for a coordination method that lets a transmedium swarm cooperatively detect, track, mark, and relay the position of a vessel or person in distress to crewed coastguard or border authorities, while an interlock enforced at the coordination layer prohibits the swarm from autonomously intercepting or towing occupied craft and instead hands such decisions to a human authority, consistent with safety-of-life and non-refoulement principles.
The invention provides a swarm-coordination method for transmedium drones supporting maritime SAR. Member vehicles cooperatively search an area across air and water, with roles of searcher, tracker, illuminator or marker, and relay assigned and re-assigned among them. On detecting a vessel or person in distress, the swarm tracks the target, illuminates or marks the position, and relays the position and status to a crewed coastguard or border authority. A coordination-level interlock prohibits any autonomous interception, boarding, redirection, or tow of an occupied or crewed craft; the swarm hands off such actions to a competent crewed authority. The interlock is enforced at the swarm-coordination layer so that no individual vehicle autonomy can override it. The method is arranged to respect safety-of-life-at-sea and non-refoulement principles, confining the swarm to assistance functions of detection, tracking, marking, and relay. The result is wide-area transmedium SAR support that strengthens, rather than substitutes for, lawful human authority over occupied craft.
FIG. 1 is a schematic of a transmedium swarm of vehicles (100a-100n) searching an air-and-water area with a coordination link (102) and a link (104) to a crewed authority station (106). FIG. 2 is a role-assignment diagram showing searcher, tracker, illuminator or marker, and relay roles. FIG. 3 is a flowchart of the detect, track, mark, and relay method. FIG. 4 is a state diagram of the occupied-craft interlock. FIG. 5 is a message-flow diagram of the hand-off to the crewed authority. FIG. 6 is a coverage map of cooperative search across air and water. FIG. 7 is a block diagram of a swarm-coordination controller enforcing the interlock above individual-vehicle autonomy. Referring to FIG. 1 and FIG. 2, the swarm members (100a-100n) cooperatively cover the search area, each member transmedium and able to search from the air and to enter the water. The coordination function assigns roles and re-assigns them as the situation develops: searcher members expand coverage, a tracker member maintains contact with a detected target, an illuminator or marker member lights or marks the position, and a relay member maintains the link (104) to the crewed authority station (106). Referring to FIG. 3, on detecting a candidate vessel or person in distress the swarm confirms and tracks the target, marks or illuminates the position to aid responders, and relays the position and status to the crewed authority. Referring to FIG. 4 and FIG. 5, if the target is or may be an occupied or crewed craft, the occupied-craft interlock prohibits the swarm from autonomously intercepting, boarding, redirecting, or towing it; the coordination controller instead packages the track and status and hands the decision to the crewed authority station (106), for example a national coastguard, border force, or the competent authority of the relevant jurisdiction. The interlock is enforced by the swarm-coordination controller of FIG. 7 above any individual-vehicle autonomy, so a single vehicle cannot be commanded or self-directed to override it. The method is arranged so that swarm behaviour toward occupied craft respects safety-of-life-at-sea and non-refoulement principles: the swarm assists by detecting, tracking, marking, and relaying, and any action upon an occupied craft is performed only by, or under the explicit authority of, crewed responders. In an embodiment the swarm continues to mark and relay until a crewed asset assumes control, then transitions to a support role under that authority.
| Patentability | 62.0% |
| Prior-art position | 52.0% |
| Technical merit | 52.0% |
| Commercial | 64.0% |
| Composite genius score | 58.5/100 (Marginal) |