Results of the Naval Oceanographic Office's 1997 AUV workshop

The US Navy has been developing autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) for operational scenarios for many years. The maturity of this technology has reached a point where it is both feasible and economical to transition AUVs to the collection of environmental data for the Navy. With this in mind, the Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) has established an AUV program with the goal of matching different AUV capabilities to meet specific Navy requirements. During September 1997 NAVOCEANO worked with scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Florida Atlantic University (FAU). Operating onboard the Texas A&M research vessel GYRE, these scientific teams collected a wide variety of environmental data in Mississippi coastal waters. This paper compares the AUV technology and the data collected by these institutions with data collected by traditional hydrographic survey techniques, and concludes that each AUV has characteristics that provide excellent quality survey data. The differences in capabilities (size, weight, mission duration, etc.) point out that no vehicle can be expected to meet all survey requirements. The best solution is a suite of vehicles, using common processing techniques, targeted to specific operational scenarios.