Autonomous Surface Vehicles

by Richard Lawrence SEO

An autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) is an unmanned vessel that operates on the ocean surface without being controlled in real time by a human operator.

How AUV works?

A pre-planned mission path, usually following a 'mowing' pattern, is transmitted to the ASV. Once in the water, the AUV navigates to the first monitoring position, performs the entire mission and then returns to the starting point. Because the ASV is always on the surface, it can maintain a GPS fix at all times, eliminating the dead reckoning used by AUVs. ASVs can range from a small platform with one sensor to large vessels over 10 m long carrying an integrated sensor system.

Types of Autonomous surface system vehicles:

As with AUVs, ASVs come in different types of propulsion.

· Some ASVs are powered only by the wind, like a sailboat,

· Others use rechargeable batteries,

· While still others are powered by fuel.

Autonomous vehicles and robotics

Marine Robotics http://marinerobo.com/ have helped to accelerate the autonomous and unmanned platforms.

These advances autonomous vehicles (AUVs) are:

· Autonomous vehicles in the water, and

· Autonomous surface vehicles both in water and in the air.

Technical objectives of autonomous vehicles

Although each platform supports a different aspect of marine mapping, they all have similar technical objectives and challenges.

· In mapping, AUVs support multibeam applications in the underwater environment,

· USVs support multibeam applications at the surface, and

· UAVs support LiDAR applications in the coastal environment.

In the development of all three types of platforms, sensor miniaturisation, power consumption, resilience and collision avoidance are important considerations. Since AUVs typically operate in deeper waters near the seabed, they do not necessarily have the same traffic management, collision avoidance and regulatory requirements as UAVs and USVs. AUV technology is in many ways more mature and has been operating without human intervention for many years. However, for both UAVs and USVs, the ultimate goal is a platform that can operate autonomously without human intervention. Until collision avoidance technology matures and legislation is in place, unmanned operations will still require a degree of oversight.

Nato -Russia Inventive alternative solutions “https://www.crewing.info/”

Advantages

As mentioned earlier, this technology is relatively mature compared to USVs and UAVs, although there have been significant recent advances in sensor performance, range and payload. For aerial mapping and remote sensing, the latest generation of bathymetric LIDAR technology for mapping shallow water coastlines is now capable of using UAVs that have a range of around 5 hours. In areas where water clarity does not allow bathymetric LiDAR, a new class of UAVs provides a cost-effective multiplier function to increase productivity. Finally, the latest generation of "over-the-horizon" USVs is capable of mapping the entire ocean depth while simultaneously accommodating an eROV or AUV for remotely operated, unmanned high-resolution mapping, exploration and/or inspection applications.