Underwater Gliders: Recent Developments and Future Applications
R. Bachmayer, N.E. Leonard, J. Graver, E. Fiorelli, P. Bhatta, D. Paley
Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Underwater Technology (UT'04),
Tapei, Taiwan, 2004
Autonomous underwater vehicles, and in particular autonomous underwater
gliders, represent a rapidly maturing technology with a large cost-saving
potential over current ocean sampling technologies for sustained (month at a
time) real-time measurements.
In this paper we give an overview of the main building blocks of an
underwater glider system for propulsion, control, communication and sensing.
A typical glider operation, consisting of deployment, planning, monitoring
and recovery will be described using the 2003 AOSN-II field experiment in
Monterey Bay, California.
We briefly describe recent developments at NRC-IOT, in particular the
development of a laboratory-scale glider for dynamics and control research
and the concept of a regional ocean observation system using underwater
gliders.