Automated control of a fleet of Slocum gliders within an operational coastal observatory

Rutgers University, Webb Research, Dinkum Software, Wetlabs, and Mote Marine Lab have been collaborating on the development and deployment of a fleet of Slocum gliders to continuously patrol the coastal oceans. The gliders are AUVs that move up and down in the water column in a saw-toothed pattern by changing their buoyancy. Presently, during a deployment, humans must look at the data, determine if a change in the sampling protocol is indicated by the data and if so, upload a new mission to the glider. Rutgers has been focusing on the development and testing of the software to automate the control of the gliders. Using agent oriented programming, the goal of the software is to assimilate data received by the command center from the gliders and other agents, such as CODAR and satellites, and generate new missions for the glider fleet. The software is being developed on a Linux system. The ability of the command center computer to automatically analyze data from a glider or gliders and recognize thermoclines and haloclines were the first pieces of the control software to be developed. Testing of the thermocline software has been completed using both hand generated data and real data collected in January 2003 from the Gulf of Mexico. New sensors are being added for applications in the New York Bight and on the West Coast Florida Shelf.