MAUVE: miniaturized and reconfigurable instrumentation for multipurpose survey with a Mini Autonomous Underwater VEhicle

The overall objective of the MAUVE project is to develop and validate at sea a miniaturized, reconfigurable, mobile and autonomous instrumented vehicle, dedicated to multipurpose survey, in particular in coastal waters. It will be characterized by coherent integration of a compact automatic multiparameter measurement module with a very small autonomous underwater vehicle, enabling sensor-driven navigation. Such a demonstrator, derived from an existing “torpedo-shaped” AUV (CALAS), is being developed and will be validated at sea in Mediterranean coastal waters, within “plume survey” and “bottom mapping” configurations. However, the potentialities of the “MAUVE” project open a much wider spectrum of potential applications, ranging from the monitoring of sub-ice conditions to the surveillance of various dumping sites, through the inspection of the quality of bathing waters