Abstract
<p>The long term goal of this research is to develop a flexible, low-cost and autonomous platform for submarine exploration. Such a platform can be used for locating submarine points of interest. The search for submarine groundwater discharges (SGD) in coastal waters is one of the possible applications for such an observatory. The swarm should be guided by a search strategy. In this research a novel search algorithm based on Particle Swarm Optimisation and inertia Levy-flight is presented. It was demonstrated using a computer simulation that the novel algorithm is capable of improving the search performance compared to the performance of a swarm of homogenous particles or inertia Levy-flight to guide the search of the swarm to locate a source of submarine groundwater discharge.</p>