Robotic Oceanographic Exploration of Hydrothermal Vent Sites on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at 37° North 32° West

• Main Authors: R. Bachmayer, S. Humphris, D. Fornari, C. Van Dover, J. Howland, A. Bowen, R. Elder, T. Crook, D. Gleason, W. Sellers, S. Lerner
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Mid-Atlantic Ridge; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.49.2982; http://robotics.me.jhu.edu/~llw/ps/ls96_14.ps

This paper reports results from an oceanographic expedition to hydrothermal vent sites at the "Lucky Strike" segment (37°N 32°W) of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge during summer 1996 with the Jason/Medea, Argo II, and DSL-120 underwater robotic systems. This deployment is used to discuss and illustrate how novel underwater robots dramatically enhance and augment, but do not replace, conventional field methods of deep-ocean oceanographic science, and to illustrate the capabilities and limitations of present day underwater robotic systems. 1. Introduction The last decade of research has seen underwater robot technology evolve from fragile laboratory engineering prototypes into mature field tools for oceanographic science. These new robot systems provide unprecedented techniques for oceanographers to explore the world's oceans. Since 1985 when the ARGO robot system was used to discover the wreck of the H.M.S. Titanic in the North Atlantic, robots have explored hydrothermal vent fields in both the.