Increasing the operational safety of autonomous underwater vehicles using the JANUS communication standard

Increasing the operational safety of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) is necessary to fully explore their potential. Currently, AUV operations are limited by several constrains including the need to guarantee no interference with manned vessels and a safe deployment and recovery. Exclusion zones are used in many deployments to de-conflict activities but in a near-future world, populated by manned and unmanned surface and underwater vehicles, this will not be enough. In the absence of clear rules and ideal perception capabilities, one way to prevent collisions is to use acoustic communications. In this article, we propose several ways of improving the safety of AUVs and manned vehicles operations through the use of JANUS, the first standard for underwater digital communications. Other ways to communicate underwater could be explored but the usage of a standard protocol represents a landmark step to implement collision avoidance rules and to make the operations of heterogeneous AUVs safer.