Intervention AUV

About: Intervention AUV is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 980 publications have been published within this topic receiving 14130 citations.

Hugin-an untethered underwater vehicle for seabed surveying

Abstract: Hugin is an untethered underwater vehicle (UUV) intended for bathymetric seabed surveying. This paper presents a description of the vehicle with emphasis on the acoustic instrumentation. The authors specifically describe the integration of the different acoustic systems and how they affect each other. They also summarise the operational results and gives indications with regard to future plans.

Systems and methods for autonomous towing of an underwater sensor array

Abstract: The methods and devices described herein provide a sensor array positioning system that may allow a user to program a series of sensor array locations, depths and orientations into a control center, which therein commands an unmanned surface or submarine vehicle which positions a sensor array. The devices comprise of an unmanned vehicle using less than about 20 Watts of power, a tow cables, a flexible sensor array comprising one or more sensors, one or more floats and one or more weights.

Expanding the small AUV mission envelope; longer, deeper & more accurate

Abstract: Small, man-portable AUVs now carry out engineering and geophysical survey tasks where previously boat-mount, towed or ROV-mounted sonars would have been required. The commercial use of low-logistics AUVs in the offshore survey industry is expanding rapidly, with several companies now operating small survey AUVs worldwide. This paper describes some of the advances in vehicle and payload technology which have enabled the uptake in commercial survey roles such as pipeline inspections, rig move surveys, harbor inspections and environmental work. Modular AUV design has enabled the continued expansion of the small-AUV envelope of operations: extending time on-site with field-swappable batteries; enhancing deliverables with multi-sensor configurations such as swath bathymetry and sub-bottom profiler; and enabling longer mission durations with multiple battery configurations. One limitation to AUV operations has been the accuracy of navigation during extended submerged missions. This has led to the development of subsea position aiding techniques such as inverted USBL to improve in the accuracy of longer missions and deeper water surveys (up to 1000m). Current AUV system performance and capabilities are illustrated using examples of side scan, swath bathymetry and sub-bottom data from a widely used low-logistics survey AUV, the Gavia Surveyor.

Wireless power recharge for underwater robotics

Abstract: Development of Underwater Robotics is an important field of research and a promising industrial application since it represents a sustainable solution to exploit ocean resources with a reasonable environmental impact. To perform prolonged manipulation task, autonomous vehicles often suffer of insufficient autonomy while remotely operated vehicles despite to their performances are often limited by the complex management of umbilical link. For this reason, a new generation of hybrid underwater vehicles able to perform autonomously some tasks returning periodically to a docking station for recharge, vehicle and tooling reconfiguration is needed. In this work, a possible solution for a wireless recharging connection, able to drastically simplify recharge operations in underwater environment at abyssal depth (thousands of meter depth) is investigated. The paper presents some preliminary design and simulation proposal, along with a preliminary experimental validation of the adopted simulation tool on a toy test case.