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.