Community News

Sabertooth AUV Goes 4D in Lake Vättern

March 11, 2015 – via Saab Seaeye

For the demonstration the Sabertooth was equipped with a high-end sensor suite including side scan sonar, sub bottom profilers, high frequency imaging sonar, multibeam echo sounder and cameras, along with GPS, DVL and inertial measurement unit (IMU) supporting the navigation. Processing of the trajectory data was achieved with an algorithm developed by Saab Dynamics.

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Research voyage helps answer questions on benefits to marine life in waters where fishing has been excluded

March 11, 2015 – via Australian Centre for Field Robotics

“The AUV has supplied us with highly-detailed imagery of the rocky reefs and sediments, together with an assessment of the benthic marine animals that live in these deep offshore systems,” he said. “This provides our first detailed look at the shelf fauna of the Marine Reserve and cool temperate region, as well as the habitat and biological assemblages that support our important coastal fisheries, such as rock lobster.”

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Ocean glider helps keep an eye on marine life

March 11, 2015 – via Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station

Scientists are using the Wave Glider, along with a network of stationary buoys, to detect when tagged animals get within range of acoustic receivers.

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Unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) from Lockheed Martin to be upgraded for countermine warfare

March 11, 2015 – via Lockheed Martin

These upgrades to the RMMV involve reliability improvements and modifications for integrating the unmanned mine hunter onto the Littoral Combat Ship and that ship’s countermine warfare mission package. Lockheed Martin previously made upgrades to the RMMV to enable the unmanned vessel to perform coastal defense, or intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR).

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Underwater research device worth $200k found after two years missing off WA coast

March 10, 2015 – via Schmidt Ocean Institute

A team from UWA, together with researchers from the Western Australian Museum, CSIRO and the Institute of Marine Sciences in Italy, found the device near the end of a 12-day expedition surveying the undersea canyon using a remote operated vehicle (ROV) for the first time.

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Cyber Subs: A Decisive Edge For High-Tech War?

March 10, 2015 – via U S Navy

What the admiral is hinting at is using submarines to launch unmanned systems. These could be as simple as a communications buoy that rises to the surface, waits a set time, and transmits. They could be expendable drones, launched from a submarine’s missile tubes the same way as a Tomahawk. They could be complex mini-subs in themselves, known as large diameter underwater unmanned vehicles (LDUUVs), that can launch from a manned sub to conduct a long-range mission. They could even be large payload modules that are towed behind a submarine until, at a strategic point, it releases them to settle to the sea floor and await the signal to unleash their payload of UUVs, drones or missiles.

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New AUV facility to help drive the robotic age of Antarctic exploration

March 10, 2015 – via Australian Maritime College

“There are four main areas of research in the Antarctic Gateway Partnership – ice shelf cavities, marine biology, solid earth and marine technologies. We’ll be leading the marine technologies theme and developing a new AUV that can go underneath ice cavities, sample the biology and provide feedback for all the other themes.”

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How Microsoft Billionaire Found Largest Sunken Battleship

March 9, 2015 – via National Geographic

High-tech tools, including an undersea “mountain goat,” and years of research led to the discovery of the WWII-era Musashi in the Pacific.

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Petrobras inks Libra AUV contract

March 9, 2015 – via DeepOcean

The Libra field is 2000m water depth in the Santos Basin, about 230km off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Surveys will be performed with a 3000m-rated autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). The AUV is capable of delivering high resolution high quality HISAS bathymetry and side scan sonar data for Sub Bottom Profiling (SBP) at high speeds.

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The fate of MH370 is still a mystery, but search has discovered many underwater secrets

March 7, 2015 – via Joint Agency Coordination Centre

Fugro’s project director Paul Kennedy said the second, more detailed phase of search used side scanners mounted on an autonomous submarine and small underwater vehicles towed about 100 metres above the seafloor. Since November they have mapped about 40 per cent of the 30,000 square kilometre priority search area. “The autonomous vehicle is searching inside a volcano at the moment,”

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Fugro expands AUV fleet with delivery of Echo Surveyor VII

March 7, 2015 – via Fugro

The Echo Surveyor VII recently joined three of Fugro’s specialist survey vessels in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, in the Southern Indian Ocean.

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Groupe Gorgé Announces First Commercial Success for the A18 Underwater Robot

March 5, 2015 – via ECA Group

The A18D robot is able to travel underwater for more than 24 hours and up to 3,000 meters in depth. Equipped with next-generation sensors and with the latest software technology in terms of missions, the robot has the best operational capacity for hydrographic surveys, oceanographic research, exploitation of the natural resources of the seabed, and even search and rescue operations.

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Pleurobot is a robotic salamander skeleton

March 5, 2015 – via Biorobotics Laboratory, Lausanne, Switzerland

Pleurobot has torque control for all of the active joints allowing it to apply neural network models of the spinal cord neural circuits of the salamander and activate virtual muscles to perform the movements of the real animal recorded in the x-ray movies.

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C&C; Technologies introduces pipeline inspection AUV

March 5, 2015 – via C&C; Technologies

The first complete pipeline inspection AUV to incorporate a laser micro bathymetry system. With one pass over the pipe’s top or side, the 4,500 m- (14,764 ft-) rated laser micro bathymetry system provides span measurements, and the Kongberg EM 2040 multibeam supports seep and leak detection with water column data.

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Yellow submarine dives off of Coastside

March 5, 2015 – via NOAA

In the coming days the boat and its crew plan to head out toward the Farallon Islands to use the robot sub to capture the best images to date of area shipwrecks.

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SeeByte Autonomy Demo System for UK MOD

March 4, 2015 – via SeeByte

The demonstration system will consist of UUVs equipped with SeeByte’s SeeTrack Neptune software, an open architecture enabling autonomous multivehicle collaboration. The systems will be integrated with the UK’s Maritime Autonomy Framework (MAF) developed under DSTI funding.

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The links between Pavilion Lake, Antarctica and Mars

March 4, 2015 – via NASA

The crew that arrived here Feb. 14 for two weeks of research used an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) and a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) to operate under the lake ice while mapping the topography of the lake with sonar, collecting samples and doing temperature readings – all in preparation for a trip to Antarctica later this year.

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Scientists zero in on submarine volcanoes

March 3, 2015 – via GNS Science

Sentry will be deployed from the Royal New Zealand Navy patrol vessel for its day-long missions to skim over the seafloor, gather data and build detailed 3D maps of the volcanoes.

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New Research Report “Global Underwater Robotics Market 2015-2019”

March 3, 2015 – via Research and Markets

The growing need for underwater robotics for ocean surveillance in the field of scientific research has forced several market vendors and research institutions to develop perpetual underwater robotics for continuous surveillance. Perpetual underwater robotics have the ability to refuel themselves and are powered by natural, renewable, and ocean thermal energy.

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Navy Deploys Drones Under Arctic Ice Ahead of Increased Ship Presence

March 2, 2015 – via Office of Naval Research

Navy scientists are using unmanned underwater autonomous robots, or drones, to examine what’s called the marginal ice zone – the portion of frozen ocean’s packed ice that meets open water

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