Managing the oceans cleanup via sea current analysis and bio-inspired coordination of USV swarms

This work presents the results of a simulated analysis concerning algorithms of self-coordination of a swarm of Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV) for the mitigation of plastic pollution in oceans. The analysis is based on real scenarios provided by the Copernicus Marine Service. The scenario includes the localization of plastics on the sea surface and their movement in time based on the sea surface currents. A swarm intelligence algorithm is used for the decentralized coordination of the USV swarm. Results are presented on a study area located in the northern Tyrrhenian sea between Corsica and the Tuscan coast, in the period of July 2016.