Publications

Organizations

Publications

This page is meant to be a storehouse for publications that reflect activities of interest to AUVAC and its members. If you have publications that should be added to this list please let us know and we will include them.

Resource investigation for Kichiji rockfish by autonomous underwater vehicle in Kitami-Yamato bank off Northern Japan

August 20, 2014 via – Robomech Journal

Abstract
Expensive kichiji rockfish is important catch for fishers and decreas significantly by over fishing. Common investigation method by the trawl for the fish is difficult to survey on rough terrain and need for big support of the ship. This paper proposes resource investigation method for kichiji rockfish using autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Tuna-Sand, and image processing method for precise measurement of the fish length. The AUV Tuna-Sand was developed for survey of material and energy resources in deep-sea such, and can observe natural seafloor automatically using only mounted sensors and devices. Our image processing makes a photograph possible to measure accurately the fish length by color correction for removing the unevenness of the brightness and distortion correction.

The AUV Tuna-Sand surveyed for 24 hours in Kitami-Yamato Bank off Northern Japan. The vehicle took about 5,300 pictures of the seafloor during five dives in the bank. 37 kichiji rockfish of about 90 to 340 mm long were in all photographs. The survey results showed the fish of 150 to 200 mm long was most often found in all dives although the number of the othSer long was not many. Six mosaic images made by our method showed that all kichiji rockfish stay on the seafloor by oneself without swam and the shortest distance between kichiji rockfish was 4.0 m.

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Deep-Sea Explorers Angle to Solve Mystery of Missing Malaysian Airliner

August 1, 2014 via – Wall Street Jornal

Now, two months after pausing its search, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau is ready to reboot the massive probe. It is poised to select among bids from the world’s most-advanced deepwater specialists, including offshore oil-and-gas companies, maritime research institutions and treasure hunters eager to use their technologies and experience to solve the Flight 370 riddle—and potentially raise their own profiles in the process.

The ATSB is expected to choose one or more of the bidders over the next several weeks before relaunching the search with $56 million in funding in late August. Those costs will be split, in amounts still to be determined, between the Australian and Malaysian governments.

The good news is that the world’s deep-sea recovery industry is now more sophisticated than ever, thanks to offshore research by oil-and-gas firms that have gone progressively deeper, as well as militaries and insurance firms. Technologies developed to hunt for everything from the Titanic to lost parts of the Space Shuttle Challenger have
further expanded frontiers, allowing investigators to work as deep as about 3.7 miles, or slightly more
than the deepest-known area of the Flight 370 search zone.

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DARPA Blue Wolf Program

July 9, 2014 via – DARPA TTO

The Blue Wolf program will develop and demonstrate an integrated underwater vehicle capable of operating at speed-range combinations previously unachievable in fixed-size platforms, while retaining traditional volume and weight fractions for payloads and electronics.

The Blue Wolf program will focus on rapid testing and maturation of novel energy, hydrodynamic lift, and drag reduction technologies, which will be developed and tested at-sea to confirm maturity and performance. Blue Wolf will modify existing hardware and systems to establish the vehicle baseline (a “reference vehicle”), and will seek technical solutions to achieve the program metrics specified in the classified addendum.

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