Design of Nereid-UI: A remotely operated underwater vehicle for oceanographic access under ice

Author

Bowen, Andrew D. ; Yoerger, Dana R. ; German, Christopher C. ; Kinsey, James C. ; Jakuba, Michael V. ; Gomez-Ibanez, Daniel ; Taylor, Christopher L. ; Machado, Calixto ; Howland, Jonathan C. ; Kaiser, Carl L. ; Heintz, Matthew ; Pontbriand, Clifford ; Sum

Author_Institution

Dept. of Appl. Ocean Phys. & Eng., Woods Hole Oceanogr. Instn., Woods Hole, MA, USA

fYear

2014

fDate

14-19 Sept. 2014

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

6

Abstract

This paper reports the development of a new underwater robotic vehicle, Nereid-UI, with the goal of being capable of deployments in polar ocean regions traditionally considered difficult or impossible to access such the ice-ocean interface in marginal ice zones, in the water column of ice-covered seas, and the seas underlying ice shelves. The vehicle employs a novel lightweight fiber-optic tether that will enable it to be deployed from a ship to attain standoff distances of up to 20 km from an ice-edge boundary under the real-time remote-control of its human operators, providing real-time high-resolution optical and acoustic imaging, environmental sensing and sampling, and, in the future, robotic intervention.

Keywords

acoustic imaging; autonomous underwater vehicles; oceanographic equipment; oceanographic techniques; optical images; sea ice; telerobotics; Nereid-UI design; environmental sensing; high-resolution acoustic imaging; high-resolution optical imaging; human operators; ice-covered seas; ice-edge boundary; ice-ocean interface; lightweight fiber-optic tether; marginal ice zones; polar ocean regions; real-time remote-control; remotely operated underwater vehicle; robotic intervention; standoff distances; underwater robotic vehicle; Acoustics; Marine vehicles; Navigation; Real-time systems; Sea ice; Vehicles;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Oceans - St. John's, 2014

Conference_Location

St. John´s, NL

Print_ISBN

978-1-4799-4920-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/OCEANS.2014.7003125

Filename

7003125