Fig. 3: Schematic of the AUV-integrated swarm model.

Satellite view of the region of interest, image courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey (a). Snapshot of the simulated marine current over the search area (b). Agent of the swarm illustrated as AUV (c). Flowchart illustrating the logical sequence of AUV dynamics and swarm cooperation step (d). Here the blue window delimits the operational steps involved in the swarm intelligence procedure (SCM), which take place at discrete time intervals once all agents have achieved the assigned target location. The superscripts n and m indicate the time advancement levels of the AUV dynamics model and the swarm cooperation model, respectively. The parameter \({q}_{k}^{n}\) denotes a coordinate of the center of mass of the k-th AUV at the m-th time step. The coordinate \({x}_{k}^{T}\) represents the navigation target for the AUV set by the swarm model at the n-th time step.