Report on Air Launched Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
The feasibility of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) being launched from aircraft was funded through the NERC Oceans 2025 programme, investigating a more economical of seeding wide swaths of ocean with sensors carrying out wide scale, synoptic physical oceanographic surveys. Small AUVs would be...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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2011
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.475.1034 http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/188105/1/NOC_R%26C04.pdf |
| Summary: | The feasibility of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) being launched from aircraft was funded through the NERC Oceans 2025 programme, investigating a more economical of seeding wide swaths of ocean with sensors carrying out wide scale, synoptic physical oceanographic surveys. Small AUVs would be parachuted down, upon hitting the water, they would begin their AUV missions. As well as applications for wide spatial surveys, opportunities were seen for supplementing existing surveys such as the Atlantic Meridional Transect (AMT), Porcupine Abyssal Plain (PAP), Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC). The faster response time of mobilising an aircraft compared with a ship opens possibilities for rapid response surveys, e.g. pollution spills, and algal blooms. A unique application particularly well suited to Air Launched AUVs (ALAUVs) is the survey of polynyas in the Polar Regions which are uncharted and important to setting the conditions for circulation beneath the ice shelves. Beyond environmental research and civil survey work, the concept also has naval applications for sound velocity profiles, bio luminescence, and with |
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