###### Abstract  
Glider-type autonomous underwater vehicles are today one of the most promising areas of marine robotics. This is confirmed by the frequent and remarkable results of various research missions and projects. The cumulative group application of underwater and no less innovative wave gliders can significantly reduce the time of obtaining oceanographic data. Together with wave gliders, one group of such robotic objects can significantly increase the efficiency, time and volume of obtaining oceanographic data. There is big interest in increasing the functionality of such a group. This article presents one of the possible alternatives to increase the functionality of a group of underwater and waveguide hang gliders. We present the process of upgrading the existing design, control algorithms and software of the SHADOW underwater glider, which was developed by the teams of the St. Petersburg State Marine Technical University (SMTU) and Okeanos JSC in order to jointly study the monitoring of underwater potentially dangerous objects with the St. Petersburg State Fire Service EMERCOM of Russia. A structural-functional approach to the group application of underwater and waveguides is also proposed, which is capable of providing oceanographic, meteorological and environmental monitoring data online, based on the developed multilayer system for planning the trajectories of group movement of objects. The results of full-scale sea trials and the developed algorithms are demonstrated. underwater glider; wave glider; AUV; group control system; path planning; RRT; neural network +
Footnote †: journal: Marine Science and Engineering  
There are projects concerning the application of gliders of various types, including groups of gliders. Underwater gliders are used to explore and monitor large areas [1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6]. The payload installed on these vehicles makes it feasible to analyze the state of the marine environment and obtain operational information on weather conditions in the sailing area [2; 7; 8]. Moreover, underwater gliders are used in the Arctic zone [9; 10], in extreme environments, which allows obtaining data on ice, oceanographic data on the presence of impurities as a result of melting glaciers, eddy formation processes [11; 12], geological exploration [13; 14], passive acoustic monitoring [15; 16], including marine mammals movement surveillance [17; 18; 19; 20], etc. Apart from that, it is possible to highlight an area of group application of underwater gliders. There are a number of successful studies in which groups of the SLOCUM-type underwater gliders were used [21; 22; 23; 24]. The group significantly increases the speed and completeness concerning obtaining oceanographic data and makes it possible to form large databases, which are used for climate change prediction [25; 26]. Development of the control system for a group of marine robotic complexes (MRCs) is an extremely complicated and time-consuming task, taking into account the specifications of the vehicles themselves (gliders) and the conditions for their application. At the moment, developers use numerous variations of centralized and decentralized control technologies, including virtual leaders, or control of the specified key points for each agent in the group separately. Implementation of such systems is quite simple and is successfully used to solve problems not only in the field of marine robotics. However, in order to promptly correct the group path planning in a dynamically changing environment, it is important to consider both the changing parameters of the external environment and the existing hardware limitations imposed on the group. Considering the oil and gas industry development and the statement of problems related to year-round monitoring and maintenance of underwater objects, fundamentally new goals are set for the development of both underwater vehicles and for the interaction of such vehicles in a group [27; 28]. There are similar developments from different research groups.