High Resolution Surveys With Auvs

Abstract: In the past two years, Bluefin has fielded several AUV systems. The survey systems that Bluefin build for the US Navy have seen almost continuous use. In addition to the Bluefin operations these vehicles participated in three Navy Exercises and one international science cruise. This paper presents the results of some of these high-resolution surveys. Figure 1:(Available in full paper) Figure 2:(Available in full paper) Introduction After developing several key AUV technologies at MIT and building 12 prototype vehicles in the process, the Bluefin team became a commercial enterprise in the fall of 1999. Bluefin's engineers have now built seven new AUVs for a range of commercial, military, and academic customers. Measured in terms of numbers of vehicles sold, Bluefin Robotics is the world's largest commercial manufacturer of autonomous underwater. Figures 1 through 5 show several of Bluefin's AUVs in action. This paper presents some of the field data that was taken with these AUVs. Specific data of the Bluefin 5000 is presented in detail. Both the sonar and the navigation data shows the success of Bluefin's "small is beautiful" design philosophy. Bluefin's current class of vehicles are the smallest survey systems in the commercial survey market. Current development efforts at Bluefin are pushing the envelope even further by fielding a new class of AUVs with a diameter of 12.75 inches. Modularity is crucial to this new design and it will allow the integration of a whole new class of survey sonars. Current developments in synthetic aperture sonars are particularly exiting and promise to revolutionize the way that data will be gathered in the not so distance future. Simultaneously, Bluefin is pushing the state of the art in the areas of mission autonomy, energy sources, and navigation systems. Bluefin 5000 The BLUEFIN 5000 is part of the new Odyssey III class of vehicles that that have been designed by Bluefin. The BLUEFIN 5000 is specifically designed for wide-area high resolution surveys missions. As such, the vehicle's main payload is a high-resolution, multi-beam side-scan sonar, the Klein 5000. The BLUEFIN 5000's oceanographic payload sensors include CTD, fluorometer, and light-scattering sensors. The design of the BLUEFIN 5000 is modular, with all essential vehicle components (main electronics pressure vessel, computation, propulsion, navigation and attitude sensors) contained in the aft modular section of the vehicle. The forward modular section contains the Klein 5000 sidescan sonar, the CTD, the fluorometer, and the light-scattering sensor. The forward modular section also contains two redundant battery packs in separate battery housings. Spent battery packs are easily replaced by removing the BLUEFIN 5000's hemispherical nose-cone, sliding each cylindrical battery housing out of the vehicle, and then re-inserting charged batteries. The forward battery arrangement allows the vehicle to be serviced rapidly between missions, with on-deck turn-around times as short as 30 minutes, excluding data download.