Satellite integrated communication system for marine robots operations

The ocean industry in Japan has been in recession since the late 1990s. The Japanese government continues to capitalize on new ocean businesses such as the development of underwater minerals, ocean wind farms, and so on. But most of these items are not yet commercialized. Japan should vitalize the ocean industries since we have a huge area of the territorial sea and exclusive economic zone (EEZ) (the sixth biggest country in the world). To vitalize them significant cost reduction of works in/on the sea will be necessary. It will be achieved by automation or unmanned work in a harsh environment. The utilization of autonomous marine robots is an effective unmanned way to achieve this cost reduction. It would be better that the robots autonomously deal with dynamic change of environment and are remotely controlled by operators for mission execution. In this scheme, a real-time broadband satellite link is very important. Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology has continuously conducted experimental research on how to apply satellite systems to a robot. The requirements for communication satellite to vitalize Japan's ocean industry include covering Japan's EEZ, minimum data rate of 5 Mbps, maximum latency of 300 ms, small earth station (easy to install on robots), completely unmanned operation of earth station, low consumption power, automatic restoration and connection, and low cost.