Inside Unmanned Systems

APR-MAY 2017

Inside Unmanned Systems provides actionable business intelligence to decision-makers and influencers operating within the global UAS community. Features include analysis of key technologies, policy/regulatory developments and new product design.

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57 unmanned systems inside April/May 2017 ENGINEERING. PRACTICE. POLICY. "The whole idea is really to make the use of AUV technology accessible," Sloane said. "There's a big push on autonomy at the moment but the platforms available now have a high cost. The motivation was to make something that's affordable for the science community, but that also can be used in the military and in oil and gas. It's also important that these AUVs carry high-quality sensors that produce good science. Fortunately, the technology in that arena has been developing very quickly." Science and Monitoring Initially, NOC wanted to deploy the micro AUVs under the Arctic ice, Sloane said, and they had to be small, light, inexpensive and semi-disposable. The micro system they devel- oped from that idea is just a little more than half a meter long. The slightly larger version BP asked for is 1 meter long. From the science point of view, the systems can get to places larger vehicles simply can't go and they can gather large temporal and spa- tial data sets for the same cost as it now takes to gather small spatial data sets, Sloane said. Today, teams looking for conductivity, tem- perature, and depth (CTD) data typically need to deploy the instrumentation over the side of a ship, a costly endeavor that only provides data for a small area. Deploying 10, 20, 30 or more of these time-synchronized micro AUVs makes it possible to collect data across a larger area and at a much lower cost. The systems also can get to places larger vehicles simply can't go. ecoSUB-μ launching from Spotter UAS. ecoSUB-m hand launch. ecoSUB-m prior to dive.

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