AUVAC

The Quest to Map Titanic

April 12, 2012
Lippsett L, The Quest to Map the Titanic, Oceanus, WHOI, Apr 2012

Bill Lange was aboard Knorr in 1985 when the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution research vessel brought back the first grainy black-and-white images of Titanic resting on the seafloor. Ever since, Lange has made it his quest to push the boundaries of imaging technology, engineering one-of-a-kind camera systems and operating them in the deepest and most extreme parts of the world’s oceans.

Lange, who directs the Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory at WHOI, has returned to the Titanic site several times. He played a major role in a 2010 expedition that yielded new, richly detailed views of the ship and wreck site that were published in 2012, the 100th anniversary of Titanic’s sinking.

The original Navy-funded expeditions in 1985 and 1986 used Titanic as a target to test pioneering deep-sea technology. Were camera systems on the list?

Bob Ballard and a few of us had dreams of bringing color video back from the deep, but camera systems to do that didn’t exist at the time. Designing a deep-sea camera system is a lot more than just taking a camera off the shelf and putting it in a pressure-resistant tube. There’s a lot of engineering that goes into making these cameras work efficiently at depths of more than 13,000 feet, withstand pressures of 10,000 pounds per square inch and a range of temperatures from 100°F on deck to near freezing on the seafloor; operate on really low power; and produce high-optical-resolution images in very low light levels. There really isn’t a big market for camera systems like that, so it’s not economical for a commercial vendor to build one.

As it turned out, Titanic has been a great driver for advancing our imaging, lighting, and other technologies in the deep sea. The constant desire of people to know more about Titanic has provided funding and resources to go back to Titanic over the years. It helped drive our desire to keep bringing technology to the next level and improving the imaging capabilities for the scientists and the public.

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The Nereus Hybrid Underwater Robotic Vehicle for Global Ocean Science Operations to 11,000m Depth

September 15, 2008
Andrew D. Bowen, Dana R. Yoerger, Chris Taylor, Robert McCabe, Jonathan Howland,, “The Nereus Hybrid Underwater Robotic Vehicle for Global Ocean Science Operations to 11,000m Depth,” in Oceans 2008, Quebec City, 2008.

Abstract

This paper reports an overview of the new Nereus hybrid underwater vehicle and summarizes the vehicle’s performance during its first sea trials in November 2007. Nereus is a novel operational underwater vehicle designed to perform scientific survey and sampling to the full depth of the ocean of 11,000 meters — almost twice the depth of any present-day operational vehicle. Nereus operates in two different modes. For broad area survey, the vehicle can operate untethered as an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) capable of exploring and mapping the sea floor with sonars and cameras. For close up imaging and sampling, Nereus can be converted at sea to operate as a tethered remotely operated vehicle (ROV). This paper reports the overall vehicle design and design elements including
ceramic pressure housings and flotation spheres; manipulator and sampling system; light fiber optic tether; lighting and imaging; power and propulsion; navigation; vehicle dynamics and control; and acoustic communications.

 

Andrew D. Bowen, Dana R. Yoerger, Chris Taylor, Robert McCabe, Jonathan Howland,
Daniel Gomez-Ibanez, James C. Kinsey, Matthew Heintz, Glenn McDonald, Donald B. Peters1
Barbara Fletcher, Chris Young, James Buescher2
Louis L. Whitcomb, Stephen C. Martin, Sarah E. Webster, Michael V. Jakuba1,3

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