News Articles with Category: Operations

Hibbard in Flooded Tunnel Inspection with Sabertooth AUV/ROV

October 17, 2014 – via Hibbard Inshore The Sabertooth was fitted with a combination of multi-beam systems and cameras to provide 3D profiling of the tunnel, along with a record of the tunnel wall status and HD video examination of areas of concern.

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NATO Fishes for Data with Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

October 2, 2014 – via Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) Researchers intend to collect data that will advance the state-of-the-art in the area of seabed mapping using autonomous vehicles, mainly for mine countermeasures applications. The use of robots removes the need for navy personnel to operate in a potentially dangerous area such as a minefield. Improved capabilities in seabed mapping also can lead to positive advancements in other fields such as support for environmental and archeological surveys.

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Robot fleet observes marine life in the open ocean

October 2, 2014 – via National Oceanography Centre The range of vehicles and instruments being deployed at the same time is unique, and they will generate vast amounts of valuable scientific data. One advantage of using robotic vehicles is that they are relatively small and quiet compared to research ships, so they are ideal for making observations of marine life.

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Big robot fleet takes to UK waters

October 2, 2014 – via National Oceanography Centre The target for the deployment is an area of ocean marking the boundary between Atlantic waters and tidal waters from the English Channel – what’s known as an ocean front. Fronts like this usually create upwelling that brings nutrients from the seabed towards the surface and encourages plankton to thrive. That in turn attracts fish, whales, dolphins and porpoises.

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Cefas Sends Its Wave Glider on First Mission

October 1, 2014 – via Cefas During her maiden voyage she will be taking measurements to assess the size of the Autumn phytoplankton bloom off SW England. Cefas scientists can remotely pilot Lyra to specific areas of interest, plankton blooms, spills/pollution, etc.

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AUV upgrade enhances performance

September 29, 2014 – via Australian Maritime College Unlike traditional INS modules, which use the estimate of the speed over the seafloor as additional input, this operating system can look both down at the seafloor or up to track the surface.

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Return to the Antikythera Shipwreck: Marine Archaeology Goes High-Tech

September 29, 2014 – via Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute As the vehicles get more compact and less expensive, and as their monitoring can be done remotely rather than having a multi-person team and a large vessel to watch over them, this kind of technology could open up many possibilities for marine archeology.

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Haida Gwaii underwater expedition may have revealed earliest site of human habitation in Canada

September 24, 2014 – via University of Victoria A geologist will now study the images to ensure the rocks are not a natural formation, then the team will return next summer to take samples of the sediment near the site and to look for stone tools.

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Introducing Sirius, The Underwater Robot [Video]

September 22, 2014 – via WHOI It has completed several missions over the Antikythera shipwreck, firstly conducting multi beam sonar runs, and then stereo photogrammetry passes, in order to stitch thousands of photos together and create a very high resolution map of the area.

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UTEC Survey completes infield AUV inspection

August 28, 2014 – via UTEC Survey For the first time UTEC operated two AUVs on a ‘back-to-back’ basis – when one system returned from a mission, the next one was ready to go immediately. In some cases the operational up-time in a given day was improved by as much as 40 per cent through the ‘back-to-back’ use of the AUVs.

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Keys to Securing the Right Resources Before You Dive In

August 28, 2014 – via Bluefin Robotics In this 60-minute online session, experts will provide valuable insight on how to avoid pitfalls and stumbling blocks byaddressing key factors early in the process. Bluefin will share practical advice on shipboard concerns, crew and operations personnel requirements, maintenance expectations, and data management.

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Subsea 7 Wraps Up AIV Mission for Shell

August 13, 2014 – via Subsea 7 Maintaining subsea asset integrity is of prime importance to our clients and the AIV is one example of where Subsea 7 can bringnew technology to meet this objective.”

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Watch great white sharks trying to eat an underwater robot

August 5, 2014 – via Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute The SharkCam is actually a REMUS (Remote Environmental Monitoring UnitS) that has been modified to follow sharks tagged with a special acoustic transponder. The vehicle can dive to a depth of 100 meters (328 feet) and can be equipped with a number of sensors to fulfill the requirements of the mission at hand.

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A Johns Hopkins Engineer Designed Pollution-Hunting Underwater Robots

August 5, 2014 – via Johns Hopkins University The robots are equipped with propellers, cameras, environmental sensors, and wireless routers to keep tabs on everything from water temperature to blue-green algae to oxygen—and even pollutants.

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MUN researchers mapping Smith’s Sound underwater

July 31, 2014 – via Memorial University Memorial University’s Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) will collect enough data about the topography and plant life beneath the water of Smith’s Sound to help them determine why this area is a favourite gathering place for cod.

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AUV surveys SAR training area

June 11, 2014 – via U S Navy To seek out potential hazards, the NOAA team brought an autonomous underwater vehicle

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FIT students searching for missing underwater search vehicle

June 11, 2014 – via Florida Institute of Technology Dr. Wood and his students were testing their AUV where Crane Creek meets the Indian River in Melbourne, when the 12-foot long, bright yellow, torpedo shaped vehicle, performed a dive and hasn’t been seen since.

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Advancing Great Lakes dangerous currents forecasting through field research and satellite analysis

May 29, 2014 – via Michigan State University The AUV was used to survey the region between the nearshore sand bars that run parallel to the shore.

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Seafloor Rescue – Universities Collaborate for Amazing Recovery of Downed AUV

May 14, 2014 – via NIUST Several dives, perseverance, a bit of luck, and an excellent team of scientists and ship operators made for a very happy ending

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Pirate ships, U-boats, lost airplanes: unmanned subs find deep sea surprises while mapping oil pipelines

April 26, 2014 – via C&C; Technologies C & C Technologies in Lafayette owns four of these AUVs, which are often used to examine underwater terrain where oil companies want to put a pipeline. But AUVs can do much more, like search for mysteriously vanished airplanes, including Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.

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Marine Robots Survey D-Day Rehearsal Wreckage for the First Time in History

April 24, 2014 – via Hydroid Mission commemorates 70th anniversary of World War II Tragedy

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The cutting-edge tech behind the hunt for lost WWII planes

April 20, 2014 – via Scripps Institution of Oceanography For years, the BentProp Project has searched the seas off Palau for missing planes shot down by the Japanese. Now the group has access to the latest oceanographic technology, which it used to find two aircraft lost for 70 years.

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UK Autonomous Sub Slips Silently Into The Deep

March 27, 2014 – via National Oceanography Centre “Although a third the weight of Autosub3 and Autosub6000, it will be able to travel for more than ten times the distance, and be deployed for over a hundred times greater duration. All this, and with a depth rating of 6000m,”

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U.S. Navy Sends Underwater Sonar Robot in Search for Missing Malaysian Airliner

March 24, 2014 – via U S Navy The torpedo shaped AUV can operate almost up to three miles underneath the waves and is equipped with a variety of sonar and cameras that could possibly detect debris at the depths of the ocean floor and transmit locations to nearby motherships on the surface.

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Autosub Long Range ready to cast off

March 21, 2014 – via National Oceanography Centre Autosub Long Range’s mission is to collect detailed data from transects down the continental slope. The vehicle will start at the top of the slope in shallow water and will descend to the base of the slope at 1500 metres and then return. Each transect will take 15 hours and the AUV will repeat this process for up to 30 days. In order to get a clearer picture of seasonal changes on the shelf slope, Autosub will be deployed four times this year, once for each season.

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CEOE oceanographers recover underwater robot lost at sea

March 20, 2014 – via University of Delaware The four-day recovery showed that knowing how to retrieve a missing robot is just as important as knowing how send it on a mission in the first place.

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Autosub Long Range prepares for launch

March 11, 2014 – via National Oceanography Centre Autosub Long Range will travel along the ocean shelf edge using its sensors to map the continental slop down to 1500 metres, while remotely-operated underwater gliders explore the water column above.

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NOC Deploys Autosub Long Range on Scientific Expedition Off Ireland

March 11, 2014 – via National Oceanography Centre Cutting edge marine autonomous systems allow the FASTNEt consortium to study the ocean shelf edge in far greater detail than ever before

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Sunken Great Lakes oil pipeline raises spill fears

March 3, 2014 – via Associated Press Enbridge has reached an agreement with Michigan Technological University to deploy a newly developed “autonomous underwater vehicle” to provide digital images of the pipeline eight times in the next two years.

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Saab Seaeye’s Sabertooth Used for Tunnel Inspection

February 5, 2014 – via Hibbard Inshore The mission set out to gather high-density dimensional data, discover open cracks or holes, find debris build-up, detect lining failures, and identify any rock falls.

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Survey of supposed deep-sea chemical munitions dump off Southern California

December 9, 2013 – via Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute Brewer used two different types of underwater robots to perform a preliminary survey of a marked dump site in the Santa Cruz Basin

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Mapping marine invaders

December 2, 2013 – via Australian Maritime College Sea Urchin Barrens mapped with DSTO-Gavia.

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R/V Sikuliaq to winter in Great Lakes, test ‘hybrid’ underwater vehicle


November 14, 2013 – via National Science Foundation He and a team of Woods Hole engineers will use the Sikuliaq for several days in March to test the Nereid UI, a modification of their deep-water hybrid underwater vehicle Nereus, for future use in polar and other icy environments.

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Bluefin and NRL Complete Long-Endurance UUV Mission from Boston to New York

October 30, 2013 – via Bluefin Robotics Bluefin Robotics has successfully completed a long-endurance UUV mission from Boston to New York totaling over 100 hours with NRL’s Reliant “Heavyweight” UUV.

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Underwater gliders help predict the next big storm

October 29, 2013 – via Rutgers COOL Data collected during Hurrican Sandy is being analyzed to increase readiness for future superstorms

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Modifying Older Robot Technologies to Study the Ocean’s Sharks in New Ways

October 28, 2013 – via Harvey Mudd How do we find a way of studying them where we don’t have to be right there, potentially influencing their behavior?

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Iver 3 Charts New Waters

October 17, 2013 – via Michigan Technological University “Whether it’s tracking underwater features or mapping trout spawning beds, we can do this all much more precisely and in much greater detail than was ever possible.”

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Prototype AUV advances deepwater inspection

October 16, 2013 – via US National Energy Technology Laboratory The operational concept is to have an AUV autonomously inspect with minimal user input an offshore structure.

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China’s unmanned submersible mission hailed as successful

October 16, 2013 – via Xinhua The vehicle, which is a robot that can travel to a depth of 6,000 meters, is tasked to explore the seabed and collect hydrological data. It is about 4.6 meters long, 1,500 kg in weight and 0.8 meters in diameter.

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China’s unmanned submersible successfully night dives

October 15, 2013 – via Want China Times The two dives, the first nighttime missions for the robot, were made on Oct. 8 and 9 and lasted 8.5 and 10 hours respectively

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Current-tracking drone subs to help improve climate predictions

October 14, 2013 – via The Engineer One of the projects, known as OSNAP, involves mooring monitoring arrays that reach from the bottom to the surface of the ocean at key points across the northern Atlantic, and sending autonomous underwater gliders to gather data from in between.

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China’s autonomous submersible makes maiden dive

October 11, 2013 – via Xinhua This task is a trial run for the vehicle and the first time an Chinese autonomous underwater vehicle has been used for a scientific expedition.

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Shark bites robot

October 8, 2013 – via MBARI Tethys attacked by shark

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Iran said to be developing unmanned submarines

October 2, 2013 – via Ground Report Iran plans to build “unmanned submarines to protect the country’s territorial waters.” “This issue is on our agenda like other issues and cases

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The Robotic Search For Lost World War II Airmen

August 16, 2013 – via Popular Science World War II combat pilots have been lost at the bottom of the Pacific ocean for nearly 70 years. Now autonomous robots have been deployed to find them.

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Aegean exploration

August 15, 2013 – via University of Delaware UD scientists assist Aegean Sea research expedition using underwater robot

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Underwater vehicle helps to explore uncharted territory

August 13, 2013 – via Australian Maritime College Under an agreement with the University of British Columbia, Canada, the research platform will be based at AMC for five years and used to conduct surveys on projects including seafloor mapping, mixing in the water column and under-ice flow dynamics in lakes and oceans.

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Citizen scientists and robot photographers join forces as National Science Week begins

August 8, 2013 – via ACFR AUVs are precisely navigated into position and provide high-resolution, overlapping images to create detailedsnapshots of the seafloor, including at depths where divers cannot operate.

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WHOI underwater robot stars in Shark Week TV show

August 6, 2013 – via Cape Cod Times Features underwater footage of a great white captured by a modified autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV, called a REMUS 100.

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Why Energy Companies And The Military Want Underwater Drones

August 6, 2013 – via Fast Company We already have drone aircraft patrolling the skies for the military and intelligence agencies. Now the military and energy companies want to develop their seaborne equivalent–autonomous, self-guided underwater vehicles.

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Shark Scientists Pit Robot Against Human

August 4, 2013 – via Discovery News Autonomous underwater robots have the ability to track tagged sharks at a smart distance and measure all kinds of crucial data using sophisticated sensors. But how does it compare to a human in a boat who’s trained to track sharks? Two scientists in California pitted them against each other to find out.

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Two Missing Aircraft Located Near Venezuela

July 10, 2013 – via Marinelink C&C; Technologies locates and Identifies 2 aircraft off Los Roques Venezuela

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Going Under: Elite Navy Units Call on Water-Based Drones

July 8, 2013 – via US News Surveillance, bomb detection among new drone roles in rebalance to Pacific

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New Unmanned Underwater Vehicles take sailors out of minefields

June 2, 2013 – via Stars and Stripes The three-week exercise, which ended Thursday, was an opportunity to learn more about UUVs, how well they worked and how to best use them. “Now it’s a matter of us perfecting our procedures for using that tech and helping that technology to continue to grow.”

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High-tech, Remote-controlled Vessels Gather Data in Lake Ontario

May 15, 2013 – via State University of New York ESF participates through Great Lakes Research Consortium

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Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) Launching in Lake Ontario

May 14, 2013 – via New York Sea Grant AUVs Will Collect Five-Year Great Lakes Research Data

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Underwater robot will let UGA researcher probe Gulf Stream eddies

May 6, 2013 – via Online Athens A University of Georgia marine scientist will explore the edges of the Gulf Stream with the university’s first robotic submersible

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Marlin Completed First Commercial Autonomous Subsea Structure Inspection

May 2, 2013 – via Lockheed Martin The Marlin System completed the first commercial autonomous subsea structure inspections in the Gulf of Mexico in the summer of 2012.

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“Truly amazing” AUV shaves weeks off surveying

April 29, 2013 – via Decomm World Last year the “Marlin” (pictured), a 10-foot long AUV developed recently by Lockheed Martin logged more than 62 hours of submerged operations, covering 72 miles of seabed.

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Viterbi students program underwater gliders

April 25, 2013 – via Daily Trojan Doctoral student researchers in several fields are collaborating to explore the possibilities of engineering, computer science and biology through the use of autonomous underwater vehicles.

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AUV Mission in Saanich Inlet Delivers Test Data Set

April 24, 2013 – via University of Victoria The main objective of the mission was to fully assess capabilities of the mini-sub.

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Shark-Stalking Robot Will Spy on Mysterious Ocean Predators

April 18, 2013 – via Wired Marine scientists have used similar autonomous underwater vehicle (AUVs) to collect oceanographic data for decades, but the technology to simultaneously track a moving animal has only developed within the past three years.

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DEFA’s fishery patrol vessel deploys high tech underwater glider

April 15, 2013 – via DEFA The glider will investigate the western Irish Sea “gyre”, a seasonal anomaly which occurs west and southwest of the Isle of Man.

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New Zealand Plane crash: Sonar finds wreckage

April 2, 2013 – via New Zealand Herald The Navy team’s Remus 100 autonomous underwater vehicle, which travels along the contours of the ocean floor, identified a large object of interest, and police have now confirmed the sonar image is of the aircraft.

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The ECOHAB experiment: A first step toward predicting harmful algal blooms

March 21, 2013 – via Phys.org “The ECOHAB experiment is part of a larger NOAA initiative that has three phases—first to understand the ecology of these blooms, then to find ways to monitor and respond to them, and finally to figure out ways to prevent or mitigate their impacts.

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Underwater Robots Tail Sharks

March 6, 2013 – via Discovery News The robot is designed to track individual animals. That can provide valuable information about their habits. “We’re looking at fine scale movement.

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CSIRO are looking for their yellow submarine

February 12, 2013 – via Mackay Daily Mercury “The Starbug had completed its mission and shut down, but before it could be hooked up to the recovery vessel something went wrong and it suddenly dived out of sight.

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Underwater robots help discover hidden faults

January 30, 2013 – via MBARI Paull’s team conducted their studies off the coast of Southern California, in a region called the California Borderland, which extends from Baja California to Point Conception. They collected ultra-high-resolution images of the seafloor using one of MBARI’s autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).

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Scientists Use Marine Robots to Detect Endangered Whales

January 9, 2013 – via WHOI The project employed ocean-going robots called gliders equipped with a digital acoustic monitoring (DMON) instrument and specialized software allowing the vehicle to detect and classify calls from four species of baleen whales – sei, fin, humpback, and right whales. The gliders’s real-time communication capabilities alerted scientists to the presence of whales in the research area, in the first successful use of technology to report detections of several species of baleen whales from autonomous vehicles.

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Robot Glider Detects Rogue Waves and Other Ocean Anomalies Missed by Satellites

December 11, 2012 – via Liquid Robotics The wave-powered sub Papa Mau not only set a record while crossing the Pacific Ocean autonomously, it also studied rogue waves and other marine phenomena invisible to eyes in the sky

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Ocean gliders help in battle against climate change

December 11, 2012 – via Business Day UNMANNED, autonomous ocean gliders are collecting data in the Southern Ocean, 1,000m below the surface, and sending it back to climate scientists and oceanographers. “This is the first time measurements of the Southern Ocean are being made on this scale,”

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Navy Group Searching for Missing Unmanned Underwater Vehicle

December 7, 2012 – via Naval Oceanography Mine Warfare Center Naval Oceanography Mine Warfare Center based at Stennis Space Center, Miss., lost contact with one of its Remus 100 Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV) in the Gulf of Mexico near Panama City and Biltmore Beach in Florida during a training exercise on Thursday night.

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Sea drones target mines in the Gulf

November 24, 2012 – via Khaleej Times Earlier this year, four mineweeping ships were deployed by the US 5th Fleet following threats by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz if attacked over its nuclear programme. The US Navy has indicated that two of those ships could return to their home ports and more Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UVVs) with their sophisticated systems could be deployed for effective minesweeping operations.

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NAVSAC to discuss COLREGS in Tampa, Florida

November 20, 2012 – via AUVSI The Navigation Safety Advisory Council (NAVSAC) will meet on 28-29 Nov. in Tampa, Fla. to discuss matters relating to maritime collisions, ramming, groundings, Inland and International Rules of the Road, navigation regulations and equipment, routing measures, marine information, diving safety, and aids to navigation systems.

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Sandy’s underwater sandscapes

November 15, 2012 – via University of Delaware UD researchers studying ‘fingerprint’ left on seafloor by Hurricane Sandy

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Run Silent, Go Deep: Drone-Launching Subs To Be Navy’s ‘Wide Receivers’

October 26, 2012 – via AOL Defense Today’s Navy is experimenting with launching robotic mini-subs and even unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from Virginia-class attack subs like the Minnesota.

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Depth Milestone For University AUV

October 17, 2012 – via NIUST The Eagle Ray AUV completed a survey in the Gulf of Mexico to a depth of 1,634 metres.

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Mote Deploys Underwater Robot to Monitor Florida Red Tide Bloom

October 5, 2012 – via Mote Marine Laboratory Mote Marine Laboratory scientists deployed an underwater robot nicknamed “Waldo” today in waters off Englewood to monitor the ongoing bloom of red tide off Southwest Florida.

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The 30-nation International mine countermeasures exercises ends; Kingfish UUV enters test phase

September 27, 2012 – via Bahrain News Agency We demonstrated the ability to employ more modern unmanned systems, including autonomous underwater vehicles deployed from the ships to hunt for and detect mines and some advanced capabilities.

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Upgrades Boost U.S. Naval Capabilities Against Iranian Threat

September 23, 2012 – via Business Week Kingfish unmanned underwater vehicle are among the programs the Pentagon this year accelerated under a “Fast Lane” initiative to counter Iranian naval weapons.

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Tracking drifting algal blooms and the nutrients that keep them going

September 18, 2012 – via MBARI In order to predict how the oceans will respond to increasing CO2 levels and climate change, oceanographers need a better understanding of how marine food webs, nutrient cycles, and the biological pump respond to changes in the ocean environment.

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Mk 18 Underwater Explosives Detector To Help Cut Down EOD Time Line

August 31, 2012 – via Inside Defense Preliminary MK 18 Mod 2 units are being tested with 5th Fleet now with operators “shaking them out in the field, making sure that they can operate and do everything else” in real-world conditions.

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Navy underwater devices go on test missions in Narragansett Bay

August 23, 2012 – via Jamestown Press Vehicles circumnavigated Jamestown several times

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Mine Warfare Group Helps In Search For Bonhomme Richard

July 23, 2012 – via Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command A four-member crew from the Oceanography Mine Warfare Center (NOMWC) Stennis Space Center, Miss., surveyed 41 nautical miles and had generated 22 contacts for French divers to examine in this summer’s expedition to find the remains of the revolutionary warship Bonhomme Richard

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A glimpse into the cutting edge of marine biology research

July 23, 2012 – via ARS Technica Once a year, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Center opens for visitors.

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Robotic torpedo surveys water quality of Chicago beaches

July 20, 2012 – via Great Lakes Echo The survey is part of a nearshore water quality study by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Chicago Park District.

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Picturing the Deep – Seeing Climate Change On The Ocean Floor

July 9, 2012 – via National Oceanography Centre Autosub 6000 will take photographs of the seafloor flying at an altitude of 3m. This should result in one of the largest scale continuous photographs of the seafloor ever taken. Using cameras attached to Autosub 6000, the scientists aim to build a picture map of the seafloor and its inhabitants – a kind of Google Street map in this corner of the Porcupine Abyssal Plain.

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Researchers create the most detailed map ever of an underwater lava flow

June 26, 2012 – via Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute “The AUV maps allowed us, for the first time, to comprehensively map the thickness and extent of lava flows from a deep-ocean submarine eruption in high resolution. These new observations allowed us to unambiguously differentiate between old and new lava flows, locate the fissures from which these flows emerged, and identify fine-scale features formed as the lava flowed and cooled.”

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Undersea volcano gave off signals before eruption in 2011

June 10, 2012 – via University of Oregon The undersea volcano located some 250 miles off the Oregon coast gave off clear signals just hours before its impending eruption.

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Tweeting Tavros

June 5, 2012 – via USF Magazine The latest bright yellow underwater robot patrolling the Gulf of Mexico and reporting information to USF marine scientists has taken to Twitter.

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Underwater drones a necessary luxury for Russian Navy

May 31, 2012 – via Voice of Russia Underwater robots can perform the following main functions without human interaction: combat mine fields and other underwater obstacles; increase the detection range of submarines’ hydro acoustic complexes; monitor and repair underwater objects; and explore the relief of the seabed and water mass. All this exceed the limits of military tasks.

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Yellow submarine hunting for alien species in lough waters

May 30, 2012 – via BBC News The idea for monitoring the oceans and lakes like this is to send machines rather than people to reduce risk

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How to Discover Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vents

May 25, 2012 – via Wired the team used high-resolution sonar maps that had been generated just two weeks earlier by the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) D. Allan B.

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Robot sailors leave Hawaii in cross-ocean voyage

May 22, 2012 – via MSNBC Four robotic ships have sailed from Hawaii on a trans-Pacific journey that aims to set a new world record for the longest voyage by an unmanned ocean-going vehicle.

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MBARI discovers new deep-sea hydrothermal vents using sonar-mapping robot

May 11, 2012 – via MBARI MBARI’s seafloor-mapping AUV is helping oceanographers spend less time looking for, and more time looking at, these fascinating deep-sea phenomena.

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CATUAV collaboration with the CSIC in the project MESTRAL

May 11, 2012 – via CATUAV To obtain adequate spatial and temporal resolution of the data small robotic submarines (AUV) and simultaneously UAV systems of CATUAV will be used.

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Cape Breton company to be part of military operation

April 15, 2012 – via Cape Breton Post Wentworth Environmental will play a part in Frontier Sentinel 12, May 2-9, specifically the portion of the operation that will clear the harbour of mines.

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Catching up with Scientific Diving at USC Dornsife: The Robot Submarine

April 12, 2012 – via Scientific American Beginning in 2011 Boeing has been deploying Echo Ranger out of the USC facility at the Wrigley Marine Science Center at Two Harbors Catalina Island

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Where the whales are

April 5, 2012 – via Sail World There are patches in the ocean where right whales congregate to feed. Nobody knows how these patches form. But understanding why they do would certainly help design policies to conserve marine animals – and perhaps help cruising sailors to avoid contact. Nicholas Woods, in this Oceans Watch Essay, here describes an expedition into an Atlantic Ocean patch, located in the ‘Great South Channel’:

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Tweeting from the Depths

March 27, 2012 – via USF News USF’s solar-powered, underwater robot is able to analyze ocean conditions, report back to humans on land.

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Orca Maritime Recovers Lost Experimental AUV with vLBV300

March 23, 2012 – via SubSeaWorldNews As a known expert in the local San Diego area Orca Maritime was contracted to recover a lost Experimental AUV.

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Titanic Wreck mapped

March 9, 2012 – via Discovery News The first comprehensive map of the Titanic wreck site has been created as researchers pieced together some 130,000 photos taken by underwater robots in the depths of the North Atlantic Ocean.

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Robotic duo pinpoints plankton in Monterey Bay

March 9, 2012 – via MBARI The researchers used their AUV and ESP sample results to compare changes in zooplankton abundance with changes in environmental conditions, creating a dynamic picture of the plankton in Monterey Bay.

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Scientists survey seabed fractured by Japan quake

March 8, 2012 – via Bangkok Post Researchers from Germany and Japan are sending high-tech vehicles to probe the seabed up to 7,000 metres (23,000 feet) below the surface where the massive seismic shock hit last March.

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‘Crowdsourcing’

March 5, 2012 – via UDaily Volunteers to help scientists analyze images on sea floor

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Aquatic robot audits Australian seabed health

March 2, 2012 – via Cosmos Online An aquatic robot will audit the watery depths of Western Australia’s Ningaloo coast this week.

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Bass Strait moods revealed

February 23, 2012 – via Themercury.com.au CSIRO scientists using a $200,000 underwater glider to track changes in the east Australian current found the unusual behaviour of water by chance.

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German-Japanese Earthquake Research Expedition

February 16, 2012 – via Hydro International The earthquake region shall be investigated by a joint German-Japanese expedition of the RV Sonne in March and April 2012 using an ROV, AUV, multibeam, parasound, gravity corer and multicorer. The aim is to determine the changes caused by the earthquake, recover buried instruments and retrieve sediment cores.

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Navy, researchers seek clues to identity of 200-year-old shipwreck off Rhode Island coast

February 8, 2012 – via Associated Press Now, researchers from the U.S. Navy are hoping to confirm what the men who discovered the wreck believe: that the sunken ship off the coast of Rhode Island is the USS Revenge, commanded by Oliver Hazard Perry and lost on a stormy January day in 1811.

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Wreck discoverers hope to confirm their find

February 7, 2012 – via New London Day A Navy research boat and staff from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution accompanied local divers Charlie Buffum and Craig Harger of Colchester, this morning out to what they believe is the 201-year-old wreck of the Oliver Hazard Perry’s ship the Revenge, which they have discovered on Watch Hill Reef.

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AFCEA West 2012: Boeing readies Echo Ranger test bed

January 25, 2012 – via UVOnline Boeing is preparing to conduct sonar payload testing in March using its Echo Ranger UUV test bed

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Princeton Security Technologies Completes Radiation Sensor Testing on LDUUV With Boeing

January 25, 2012 – via Princeton Security Technologies Princeton Security Technologies Completes Radiation Sensor Testing on LDUUV With Boeing

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Underwater archaeology: Hunt for the ancient mariner

January 25, 2012 – via Nature Armed with high-tech methods, researchers are scouring the Aegean Sea for the world’s oldest shipwrecks.

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Using AUV Technology to Map Underwater Volcanic Activity

January 25, 2012 – via SeaCurrents The AUV used by MBARI, the D. Allan B. is gathering data using three different sonar systems, collecting information on depth, sub-bottom features and bottom texture.

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Submarine back in safe hands

December 16, 2011 – via Noosa News This wayward robotic self-operating submarine found on Saturday was on Tuesday reunited with its human minder who was delighted that all is not lost.

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Hydroid AUV discovers underwater helicopter wreckage off Norwegian island

December 13, 2011 – via Boston Globe Hydroid Inc. said that one of its AUVs has discovered the wreckage of a 2003 helicopter crash in icy waters near Svalbard, a group of Norwegian islands in the Arctic Ocean.

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We’ve found your yellow submarine

December 11, 2011 – via Sunshine Coast Daily Early morning walkers and lifeguards were the first to discover the slightly damaged mystery vessel on Glen Eden Beach.

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A yellow submarine has gone missing off Queensland’s Moreton Island.

December 10, 2011 – via Ninemsn The $500,000 unmanned research vessel, technically a remote-controlled Integrated Marine Observing System named AUV Sirius, is operated by the University of Sydney’s Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR).

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Unmanned submarine goes missing off Queensland coast

December 10, 2011 – via Sydney Morning Herald The $500,000 unmanned vessel, technically a remote-controlled integrated marine observing system named AUV Sirius, is operated by the University of Sydney’s centre for field robotics.

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Seafloor-mapping robot yields a host of new geologic discoveries

December 5, 2011 – via MBARI MBARI’s seafloor mapping robot has had a busy year. It documented a huge lava flow from a three-month-old volcanic eruption off the Oregon coast; it charted mysterious three-kilometer-wide scour marks on the seafloor off Northern California; and it unearthed data that challenge existing theories about one of the largest offshore faults in Central California.

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Submersible drone joins search for yachtie

November 25, 2011 – via The Southland Times A navy team usually deployed to search for underwater mines will use a specialist submersible drone to try to find and retrieve the body of a missing Wanaka yachtie today.

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Echo Ranger: On the Move Again

November 21, 2011 – via Boeing Its mission: Performing acoustic testing to record ambient noise in the ocean (e.g. marine mammals and surface shipping) and participating in gamma-ray tests that collected and analyzed ocean samples looking for naturally occurring radioactivity in seawater. The tests are providing information that proves the capabilities of the unmanned submersible.

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Underwater robotics teams mapping the water flow of the Mar Menor this week

November 2, 2011 – via Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena The Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena (UPCT) is collaborating with the Monterrey Bay Aquarium Research Institute from California to use underwater robots in an experiment to measure and assess the influence of the water from the Mar Menor on the adjacent area of the Mediterranean.

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HMNZS Resolution locates remnants of war in PNG

October 21, 2011 – via VOXY HMNZS RESOLUTION has captured 3D sonar imagery of WW2 wrecks in Simpson Harbour, Rabaul, Papua New Guinea (PNG).

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UNDERWATER GLIDER (SEAGLIDER©) WILL BE OPERATING IN WATERS AROUND THE ISLAND FOR 7 DAYS

October 19, 2011 – via PLOCAN Commissioning and deployment of an unmanned underwater vehicle (Seaglider© model) in waters of the marine reserve of “Mar de las Calmas” in front of “El Tacorón”, which is expected will increase the spatial and temporal capacity of biogeochemical parameters observation in the water column.

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Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) to be Used for Engineering Surveys on the Undersea Section of “South Stream” Pipeline

September 24, 2011 – via Oil and Gas Eurasia Interview with Alexander Arkhipov, First Deputy General Director for engineering

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MARSLIFE found in Clinton area lakes

July 20, 2011 – via 100 Mile Free Press With the use of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) researchers will conduct high-resolution geoacoustic mapping of the MARSLIFE field site in the lake.

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Submersible studies lake

July 12, 2011 – via White Bear Press A drone submarine was launched into the depths of the lake this week as federal officials hope to discover new leads in an ongoing lake level investigation.

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Underwater vehicle to map out sources of groundwater in White Bear Lake

July 9, 2011 – via Pioneer Press The EcoMapper, a torpedo-shaped “autonomous underwater vehicle,” according to its manufacturer, will cruise the depths of White Bear over the next week, collecting data on water temperature and quality.

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UVic launches Arctic search for sunken wreckage of Franklin expedition

July 7, 2011 – via Saanich News On Aug. 9, a three-person engineering and operating team from UVic’s Ocean Technology Lab, along with their autonomous underwater vehicle, the Bluefin-12 will join a crew from Parks Canada to search the waters off Nunavut’s King William Island.

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Robot explores where no human dares: The final rest of the Franklin expedition

July 5, 2011 – via The National Post In August, when the Arctic ice is thinnest, a small icebreaker filled with Parks Canada archaeologists will make its third attempt to find the Erebus and Terror, the long-lost vessels of the Franklin expedition, a doomed 1845 voyage to find the Northwest Passage. While underwater searches in 2008 and 2010 relied largely on sonar, this year researchers will be bringing along an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle to “dramatically increase the size of the search area.”

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New Technology to be Deployed in the Search for Franklin’s Lost Vessels

June 30, 2011 – via Parks Canada Government of Canada continues Franklin search expedition in Canada’s Arctic

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UVIC Assists in Search for Franklin’s Ships

June 30, 2011 – via University of Victoria Researchers from UVic’s Ocean Technology Lab will be using their autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to assist the Parks Canada team in its search. Using UVic’s specially designed Bluefin-12 AUV, the Parks Canada team will be able to dramatically increase the size of the search area. The three UVic researchers and their AUV anticipate joining the search in August 2011.


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Hunt resumes for wreckage of Franklin expedition

June 30, 2011 – via Toronto Star What makes the scientists and archeologists so hopeful this year is the employment of an unmanned underwater vehicle, courtesy of the University of Victoria, that is capable of searching the frigid ocean floors. The surface search will cover about 200-square-kilometres while the underwater search will cover another 100-square-kilometres, said Ryan Harris, a Parks Canada underwater archeologist involved in the hunt.

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Arctic search for Franklin’s lost ships continues

June 30, 2011 – via CBC News Canadians are heading back to the Northwest Passage this summer to continue searching for the wrecks of Sir John Franklin’s lost ships from 1845.

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Hydroid REMUS AUV Aids in Discovery of Missing German WWI U-boat

May 10, 2011 – via Hydroid Hydroid, Inc., a subsidiary of Kongsberg Maritime, the leading manufacturer of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, announced today that its REMUS 100 AUV aided in the discovery of the World War I German submarine U-106, which had been missing since October 1917. The Royal Netherlands Navy (RNLN), which used the REMUS vehicle, located the missing submarine off the coast of Terschelling in the Netherlands.

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International Science Mission Investigates NZ’s Submarine Volcanoes

February 28, 2011 – via Voxy News A New Zealand-led group of international scientists will spend the next three weeks on NIWA’s research vessel Tangaroa, using a free-diving robotic vehicle to investigate mineral deposits and hydrothermal activity at five major submarine volcanoes in the Kermadec Arc, northeast of the Bay of Plenty.

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25 Years After Titanic’s Discovery, New Expedition Seeks to Virtually Raise the Wreck

August 25, 2010 – via Waitt Institute In what is arguably the most technologically advanced scientific expedition to Titanic ever organized, RMS Titanic, Inc. has brought together a team of leading archaeologists, oceanographers and scientists including The Institute of Nautical Archaeology, The National Oceanic Atmospheric and Administration’s National Marine Sanctuaries Program, and The National Park Service’s Submerged Resources Center to execute this historic “mission of firsts.”

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Leeds researchers study undersea rivers with a yellow submarine

August 2, 2010 – via University of Leeds A team of scientists led by the University of Leeds has used a robotic ‘yellow submarine’ to observe detailed flows within an ‘undersea river’ for the very first time.

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Advancing underwater robotics – Waterpower and Dam Construction

June 15, 2010 – via Waterpower Magazine AIRSUB is a research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology with the aim of exploring the use of advanced underwater robotics technology for the visual inspection of hydroelectric dams. Two particular application scenarios have been studied: the bottom floor inspection for habitat mapping purposes of the zebra mussel; and the visual inspection of the concrete of the dam wall.

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Mine-Sweeping Mammals Find New Work Searching for the Gone-Rogue Bots Designed to Replace Them

June 10, 2010 – via Popular Science Call it job creation: this week a handful of sea lions and dolphins trained to locate undersea mines earned their jobs back, jobs that were supposed to be turned over to undersea mine-sweeping robots. And why were these seafaring mammals brought back into service? To find the very robots that were supposed to replace them, four of which have gone AWOL somewhere off the coast of Virginia. You can’t make this stuff up.

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