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Posts Tagged ‘undersea vehicles’

The four-wheeled diving car, the world-famous Bathysphere, the farming sub, and more underwater craft from decades past

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By definition, submersibles lack the autonomy, power, and size of submarines. Most of the vehicles covered in this gallery couldn't function unless they were tethered to a surface ship. While Edwin Link dreamed of using submersible to facilitate week-long "camp outs" under the sea, these vehicles were barely equipped for comfortable living. But for the purposes of exploration, leisure, and even undersea farming, they were perfect (well, as perfect as technology back then would allow).

Appearance-wise, early submersibles shared more in common with land vehicles than military submarines. Early diving cars were squarish, had four wheels, and lacked windows. One even came with a large crane for harvesting sea sponges. This all changed in 1928 when Otis Barton convinced naturalist William Beebe that a small spherical vessel was best suited for resisting the ocean's crushing pressure. Six years later, Beebe and Barton set a diving record when their Bathysphere descended 3,028 feet, making Beebe the first marine biologist to study deep-sea wildlife in its natural surroundings.

Naturally, the Bathysphere's renown drove Beebe's peers to emulate his success. Auguste Piccard, who had previously set an altitude record while ballooning, developed an interest in adapting balloon technology for undersea vehicles. The result? A spherical cabin suspended from an enormous buoyancy device containing 10,000 gallons of aviation gasoline. Piccard's work reaped an incredible reward just two decades later, when his son Jacques Piccard and Lt. Don Walsh became the first (and so far, only) men to reach Challenger Deep, the deepest known point in the world's oceans.

Click through our gallery to read about the Bathysphere, the "U-Drive U-Boat," and other submersibles from decades past.

Tethys, designed at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, represents a new class of autonomous underwater vehicles. Most AUVs sacrifice range for robust science instruments, or vice versa, leaving scientists with an incomplete picture of life on the seas. Tethys, on the other hand, can travel at high speeds for hundreds of miles, float with the currents for weeks at a time and carry a wide range of instruments.

For most of October, it crisscrossed Monterey Bay as part of an experiment to track microscopic algae patches. It did such a good job that its creators hope to send it to Hawaii eventually, using high-powered disposable batteries.

The robot’s creator, Jim Bellingham, spent four years trying to build an AUV that could bring agility and endurance to the study of oceanography. In the past, studying phenomena like algal blooms depended on luck and timing — oceanographers would stick an instrument on a mooring and hope algae would drift past it, or they would schedule a cruise and hope the bloom would happen while they were at sea, he explains in a MBARI news story.

“Tethys can travel to a spot in the ocean and 'park' there until something interesting happens,” he said. Once a bloom occurs, Tethys can switch into high gear and follow the bloom as it evolves, much like biologists on land would follow migrating animals.

The new robot can make its own decisions, unlike most AUVs, which are programmed to follow a specific path through the water. Tethys can make some decisions without human intervention, much like its cousin 'bot, Gulper.

Tethys can also work in concert with other short-range AUVs, which might have even more science instruments on board. In the recent algae experiment, Tethys would park in an algae patch and pinpoint its center so scientists could send in other robots for more extensive analysis, as Sandeep Ravindran at Nature News explains.

Best of all, it will only cost a bit more than the average glider, which runs about $140,000. It’s cheap enough that individual labs can buy them, Bellingham said.

The Aqua robots can be used in hard-to-reach spots like coral reefs, shipwrecks or caves. Though the diver remains at at a safe distance, he can see everything the robot sees. Check out this robot’s-eye-view of a swimming pool.

Aqua robots are controlled by tablet computers encased in a waterproof shell. Motion sensors can tell how the waterproofed computer is tilted, and the robot moves in the same direction, New Scientist reports.

As we wrote earlier this summer, tablet-controlled robots working in concert with human divers would be much easier to command than undersea robots controlled from a ship. Plus, they just look so cute.

[New Scientist]

Chinese officials announced Thursday that the new Jiaolong sub made 17 dives in the South China Sea this summer, the deepest to 12,332 feet (3,759 meters). The feat makes China the fifth country to dive past the 3,500 meter mark.

The 27-foot-long, 22-ton sub's main mission will be energy research, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper. It was designed to reach a depth of 23,000 feet (7,000 meters) and operate in most of the world's oceans, the newspaper says. No other submarine in the world is rated for that deep a dive.This spring, carrying a three-person crew, Jiaolong landed on the seafloor and planted a Chinese flag, along with a sign depicting the legendary dragon's palace. Jiaolong is the name of a mythical sea dragon.

Meanwhile, AFP is reporting that China plans to build a research base in the coastal city of Qingdao, in Shandong province, to serve as a support station for Jiaolong.

Engineers are starting design work on the 65-acre site, which would cost about $73 million, AFP says.

Scientists believe deep-sea beds at 13,200-19,800 feet (4,000-6,000 meters) hold abundant deposits of rare metals and methane hydrate, a solidified form of natural gas bound in ice, which could help satiate China's energy appetite.

China's energy exploration program began in 2002 with the design of Jiaolong, whose construction took six years. More than 100 Chinese companies were involved in the project, China Daily says.

[China Daily via AFP]

The European Union-funded Grex project, named for the Latin word for "flock," involves networking software to coordinate multiple autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVs. Multiple AUVs can benefit from the sum of their parts, as the project's Web site notes -- each could perform separate functions that contribute to a larger mission.

Until now, AUVs have operated solo, partly because it's difficult to link different vehicles through seawater at distances of more than a few hundred feet. But in the Grex system, vehicles will be able to act as relay stations, bouncing a control signal from the mother ship to the networked submarines over many miles.

One of the firms involved in the Grex project, German firm MC Marketing Consulting, designed a "Grex box" that incorporates communications tied to the vehicle controls. The system could be added to an existing AUV, retrofitting it for use as a team member, according to Michael Jarowinsky of MC Marketing Consulting.

In tests off the coast of Portugal last winter, Grex-capable vehicles were able to assemble into formation and perform "swarm" tasks. Two small boats and two AUVs each ran its own tack while talking to the others and adjusting its speed to reach formation.

The main goal is to use Grex vehicles for marine science -- as the group points out, humans know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the oceans, 90 percent of which has not been explored. But the technology has several commercial applications, including the offshore oil industry, Jarowinsky says.

SeeByte, one of the project's partners, plans to market the control software and graphical user interface for managing schools of AUVs. The project coordinator, ATLAS Elektronik, plans within the next four years to offer a complete system, including the Grex box, software and installation and training.

[PhysOrg]

Remotely operated robots are shooting video, carrying equipment, drilling pieces into place, and monitoring the flow of oil. BP has contracted with at least four robotics companies, including Oceaneering International Inc., Subsea 7 and C-Innovation, to do the work, according to NPR.

Initially, the undersea robots were unimpressive, failing to activate a valve that could have sealed the well from the surface. But since then, they cut the broken riser pipe and placed both containment domes over the spewing well. They’ve also provided the live video streaming across millions of TV screens.

Teams of humans on boats are controlling the robots, which have names like Maxximum, Hercules and Skandi Neptune. The human operators -- two for each robot -- drive using joysticks, but they can’t see where their undersea avatars are going. Even with headlights, the robots’ environment is almost completely dark, so they use sonar to gauge their proximity to objects.

The ROVs range in size from that of a small car to a big truck, although most of their bulk consists of foam intended to protect them from the intense pressures found at 5,000 feet below the surface. They remain connected to fiber-optic or copper tethers that enable communications, but sometimes ocean currents tangle or even break those lifelines.

The spill has shown the world how much hinges on the work of a team of robots, according to John Mair, global technology manager for the Scottish firm Subsea 7.

Here’s hoping they (and their human drivers) can handle the pressure.

[NPR via Gizmodo]