@INPROCEEDINGS{7991471,
  author={A. S. {Ferreira} and J. {Pinto} and P. {Dias} and J. B. {de Sousa}},
  booktitle={2017 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS)}, 
  title={The LSTS software toolchain for persistent maritime operations applied through vehicular ad-hoc networks}, 
  year={2017},
  volume={},
  number={},
  pages={609-616},
  abstract={In order to further expand the sustainability of maritime operations the use of autonomous vehicles has been employed at an increasing scale. This natural increase comes not only in the form of the multiplication of the numbers of the same vehicle model, but also in diversifying the vehicle composition setup in order to allow the exploitation of different types of payloads. Moreover, this use of heterogeneous multi-vehicle teams allows overcoming individual limitations that one specific vehicle model might have. Nevertheless, this increase in scale and functionality also causes an increase in control, management, and spatial and operational complexity. This complexity is addressed in the framework of the LSTS Neptus-IMC-Dune software toolchain. The software toolchain is a framework for mixed-initiative control (humans in the planning and control loops) of unmanned ocean and air vehicles operating in communications challenged environments with support for Disruptive Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocols. The use of such a toolchain has allowed for repeated and successful deployments of heterogeneous multi-vehicle teams. The paper reports these deployments together with an in-depth description of the toolchain.},
  keywords={computational complexity;marine vehicles;mobile robots;protocols;software tools;telerobotics;vehicular ad hoc networks;LSTS software toolchain;persistent maritime operations;vehicular ad-hoc networks;autonomous vehicles;vehicle model;vehicle composition setup;heterogeneous multivehicle teams;operational complexity;LSTS Neptus-IMC-Dune software toolchain;mixed-initiative control;unmanned ocean vehicles;air vehicles;disruptive tolerant networking protocols;DTN;Software;Planning;Autonomous systems;Robots;Sea surface;Command and control systems},
  doi={10.1109/ICUAS.2017.7991471},
  ISSN={},
  month={June},}