  Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are being tasked with increasingly
complex missions. The acoustic communications required for AUVs are, by the
nature of the medium, low bandwidth while adverse environmental conditions
underwater often mean they are also intermittent. This has motivated
development of highly autonomous systems, which can operate independently of
their operators for considerable periods of time. These missions often involve
multiple vehicles leading not only to challenges in communications but also in
command and control (C2). Specifically operators face complexity in controlling
multi-objective, multi-vehicle missions, whilst simultaneously facing
uncertainty over the current status and safety of several remote high value
assets. Additionally, it may be required to perform command and control of
these complex missions in a remote control room. In this paper, we propose a
combination of an intuitive, natural language operator interface combined with
communications that use platforms from multiple domains to relay data over
different mediums and transmission modes, improving command and control of
collaborative and fully autonomous missions. In trials, we have demonstrated an
integrated system combining working prototypes with established commercial C2
software that enables the use of a natural language interface to monitor an AUV
survey mission in an on-shore command and control centre.
