  This paper proposes a bandwidth tunable technique for real-time probabilistic
scene modeling and mapping to enable co-robotic exploration in communication
constrained environments such as the deep sea. The parameters of the system
enable the user to characterize the scene complexity represented by the map,
which in turn determines the bandwidth requirements. The approach is
demonstrated using an underwater robot that learns an unsupervised scene model
of the environment and then uses this scene model to communicate the spatial
distribution of various high-level semantic scene constructs to a human
operator. Preliminary experiments in an artificially constructed tank
environment as well as simulated missions over a 10m$\times$10m coral reef
using real data show the tunability of the maps to different bandwidth
constraints and science interests. To our knowledge this is the first paper to
quantify how the free parameters of the unsupervised scene model impact both
the scientific utility of and bandwidth required to communicate the resulting
scene model.
