Simulatio of Submari E Grou Dwater Discharge of Dissolved Orga Ic Matter Usi G Cellular Automata

In order to design new search strategies for collaborating autonomous underwater vehicles, a 2D simulator was developed to simulate costal water environments. This allows for evaluating the new strategies without running the risk of losing expensive hardware during the tests. The simulator developed is based on the concept of cellular automata. Details of the simulator are described before preliminary qualitative results for three different scenarios are discussed. Finally, planned further improvements are presented. I TRODUCTIO Marine scientists are sometimes interested in locating submarine underground discharges of dissolved organic matter (DOM) (Suryaputra 2012) near the coastline. The major source of DOM in coastal waters is the degradation of terrestrial plant matter, which is dissolved and, for example, transported through river systems and estuaries to the marine environment (Stedmon et al. 2003). DOM sources or springs may appear if surface water transporting DOM percolates through the sea floor and exits beneath sea level (Figure 1). Figures 1: Submarine Groundwater Discharge of Dissolved Organic Matter Near the Coastline The area of interest, i.e. the search area, is reasonable small. Figure 2 shows the top view of a typical scenario. The long term of this project is to develop a swarm of small autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) (Figure 3) to locate any DOM sources, i.e. locations of highest DOM concentration, within a predefined area of interest (Nolle 2015).