Unlocking the Power of Combined Autonomous Operations with Underwater and Surface Vehicles: Success with a Deep-Water Survey AUV and USV Mothership

The GEBCO-NF Alumni Team is an international team working on solution towards autonomous Ocean Mapping operations. The Team was initiated and led by alumni of the Nippon Foundation / GEBCO training program at the University of New Hampshire. The alumni worked closely with international partners and suppliers to develop and advance their concept created for the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE. The Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE competition aimed to push the boundaries of ocean technologies by creating solutions to the grand challenge of mapping our oceans. The Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE challenge was to develop a complete system that could map 100 km
²
in 16 hours at 5 m horizontal resolution grid and produce images the elicited excitement in the general public. The designated survey area for the XPRIZE challenge could be up to 50 nautical miles offshore and operations had to be remotely coordinated from a land-based operation center. The entire mapping system had to fit into a standard 40-foot shipping container. The aim of the GEBCO-NF Alumni Team was to leverage existing technology, wherever possible, and to integrate them to achieve the competition requirements. Their strategic approach was to develop strong partnerships with technology and services providers to augment the hardware, integration and software needs of the Team. The GEBCO-NF Alumni Team conceived a two-system, Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) and Remote-controlled or Uncrewed Surface Vehicle (USV), concept to autonomously map the seafloor in a wide variety of ocean environments. The AUV-USV idea will lead to more efficient, safer and cost-effective seafloor mapping operations. Autonomous seafloor surveys, with remote AUV launch and recovery (human-in-the-loop) and with the USV autonomously tracking the AUV for a complete survey mission while being monitored from a remote shore station, were demonstrated to be a viable option for future offshore survey and inspection projects. The technology, processes and procedures developed for this project are a big step towards larger scale implementation of these concepts.