AUVAC

Bowen AD,Nereid UI: Under Ice Light Tethered ROV, Oceanology 2014, Mar 11 12013

March 11, 2014 via – Oceanology 2014

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has been awarded funds by the National Science Foundation to develop a tethered robotic underwater vehicle for under-ice exploration by 2014. By employing a novel light-weight tether for data-only communications, the vehicle will provide the U.S. Polar Research Community with a capability to tele-operate, under direct real-time human supervision, a remotely-controlled inspection and survey vehicle under fixed ice at ranges up to 20 km distant from a support ship or other deployment site. Physical tethering of an underwater robot is required to provide low-latency, high bandwidth control and real-time data return. The vehicle will enable exploration and detailed exploration in under-ice environments through the use of high-definition video coupled to a suite of chemical and biological sensors. Long-range light-fiber tether technology provides the high bandwidth link necessary for real-time control under the direction of the science party which AUVs cannot meet.

Sabertooth a Seafloor Resident Hybrid AUV / ROV System for Long Term Deployment in Deep Water and Hostile Environments.

August 12, 2013 via – UUST 2013

Increasing use and complexity of subsea installations has put focus on the costs of maintaining these systems. In addition, access to these systems is sometimes limited by adverse weather and ice conditions. Conventional methods for intervention, maintenance and repair (IMR) using surface ships and ROV’s are very expensive furthermore response and mobilization times can be fairly slow.

To address this Saab Underwater Systems has developed a hovering Hybrid AUV/ROV system to remotely perform IMR without or strongly reduced need for a supporting ship. This system is based on the Double Eagle SAROV, a hovering Hybrid AUV/ROV in production for the military market and proven components from Saab Seaeye ROV product range.

This paper will present the Seaeye Sabertooth subsea resident AUV/ROV system, its concept of operation, design and the cooperation project between Saab and Aker Solution. It will also present the ongoing Sabertooth tests and trials conducted together with Tecnomare and Chevron.

UUST 2013

August 12, 2013 via – UUST 2013

Final Agenda

Autonomous Transient Ocean Event Monitoring (ATOEM)

August 11, 2013 via – UUST

A novel conceptual design is presented for a research platform for Autonomous Transient Ocean Event Monitoring
(ATOEM). In simplest form, ATOEM would be an autonomous diesel-electric submarine of conventional design, but stripped of all of its requirements for human occupation and life support, and whose “torpedo” tubes would instead be loaded with a variety of AUV configurations (e.g., benthic, photic zone and midwater) capable of autonomous docking with the “mother ship”. Global deployment of a large fleet of modular, low-cost, highly-manufacturable ATOEM
platforms has the potential to transform oceanographic research by providing coordinated, comprehensive, time-series, spatiotemporal measurements of all key ocean properties on an unprecedented scale.

Modification of a Military Grade Glider for Coastal Scientific Applications

October 14, 2012 via – IEEE/MTS Oceans 2012

Exocetus Development, LLC of Anchorage Alaska has recently purchased the assets, IP, and manufacturing technology for the ANT Littoral Glider [now called the Coastal Glider] developed with ONR funding during the past 6 years. The glider technology developed under this program is now being modified to be more readily deployed in near coastal scientific applications. The glider is capable of self-ballasting from essentially fresh to full ocean water, and has a variable speed capability to allow it to handle near shore currents up to 2 knots. The glider is currently being modified to include a dedicated science computer and improved communications and survivability. This paper describes the prior and current development of this vehicle, describes the vehicle’s capabilities and specifications, discusses initial applications, and describes plans for future development. Additionally, some of the testing conducted during the past two years by GA Tech, NPGS, NUWCI-Newport, and KORDI in Korea is presented.

Unmanned Maritime Systems Autonomy

May 7, 2012 via – Minwara

Presentation to 10th International MIW Technology Symposium Moneterey CA, 7 May 2012

Slocum Glider Expanding the Capabilities

August 22, 2011 via – UUST 17

Architecture: A significant change is that instead of providing shallow and deep gliders, the G2 is pressure tolerant to 1000 meters depth operation and, building on the modular concept, can be outfitted with interchangeable front pump sections that are optimized for the operational depths. Pump combinations include 30, 100, 200, 350, and 1000 meters. Carrying the additional structure to handle a greater pressure tolerance and still have acceptable payload performance in the shallow water regime is made possible by utilizing our patented composite hulls sections that are significantly lighter than aluminum and additionally are tuned to match the compressibility of water – saving buoyancy drive energy during ascent and descent.

SUB-ICE EXPLORATION OF AN ANTARCTIC LAKE: RESULTS FROM THE ENDURANCE PROJECT

August 22, 2011 via – UUST 17

Abstract

The ENDURANCE autonomous underwater vehicle was developed and deployed to explore and map a unique environment: the waters of Lake Bonney in Taylor Valley, one of the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica. This permanently ice-covered lake presented several unique challenges and opportunities for exploration and mapping with an AUV. ENDURANCE was successfully deployed in the west lobe of Lake Bonney in the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 austral summer seasons, completing the rst full synoptic 3-D chemical prole and high-resolution 3-D geometric mapping of such a body of water. ENDURANCE successfully traversed the entire 1 km x 2 km lobe of the lake, including successful automated spooling of a science payload and automated docking into a deployment/recovery melt hole 0.25 m larger in diameter than the vehicle.

A Mission Oriented Metric to Assess the Benefits of Biologically Inspired Propulsion

August 21, 2011 via – UUST

In this study, we quantify the potential mission specific benefits of biomimetic propulsion as a function of environmental conditions and operational requirements for a small unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) mission. The benchmark mission requires the UUV to persist in shallow water for 24hr within a specified radius around the desired station, preceded and followed by a 40km transit

The achievable time on station for the nominal vehicle using biologically inspired propulsion is compared to that of the same vehicle using currently available thrusters. The comparison is carried out across a range of sea-states, with varying requirements for station keeping precision, and with a range of assumptions about the performance improvements provided by biomimetic propulsion. The expected magnitude and frequency of wave disturbances in shallow water are generated using U.S. Army Corps of Engineers guidelines for harbor design and construction.

If biomimetic propulsors can deliver on the promise of significantly improved effectiveness in generating low speed maneuvering forces, fin propelled vehicle can perform a high precision 24 hour station keeping mission in 3x higher waves than the thruster propelled vehicle. In rough conditions, the fin propelled vehicle can perform the mission with 10x higher precision.

Feature Based Navigation for a Platform Inspection AUV

August 21, 2011 via – UUST

Under the Offshore Platform Inspection System (OPIS) program, an LM AUV, the MARLIN(TM), is being outfitted with a mission package which includes a 3D imaging sonar and processors in order to inspect and build 3D models of subsea structures, and to detect large scale damage to these structures relative to a reference model. A key component of this model building and change detection functionality is a process by which sonar data is aligned to the reference model and the vehicle/sensor pose is recovered. An interesting by-product of this is the use of this recovered pose for feature based navigation. This paper presents a method to fuse the estimated pose from an inertial navigation system with the pose recovered from the alignment of sonar data with a reference model, and the use of this fused estimate in vehicle guidance, 3D model building and change detection, and to improve inertial navigation performance. While the technology is developed for an underwater platform inspection system, the methods have broader applicability. Results are presented to demonstrate the performance of the feature-based navigation system.