Developing Coordinated Communities of Autonomous Gliders for Sampling Coastal Ecosystems

Abstract

A B S T R A C TUnderwater autonomous gliders have transitioned from exotic experimental systems to becoming a standard platform capable of collecting data over a critical range of spatial and temporal scales in the ocean. The data are proving to be extremely valuable for addressing a wide range of basic and applied research questions. This evolution has led to a growing international community of glider laboratories and offers the potential of increased opportunities to leverage efforts across this "young" growing community. To that end, we review the evolution of the glider communities and share our opinions of opportunities and hurdles. These communities grew from distributed research and/or education groups. It is crucial as systems continue to evolve that there is an effort to "harmonize" data products while preserving the diversity of approaches/science/experimentation. As the gliders have matured and new battery solutions provide additional energy, there is an increased focus on the integration of a wider range of sensors to be incorporated into gliders. Many of these new classes of sensors will be particularly effective for characterizing biological processes in the coastal ocean. As biological sensors generally provide proxy estimates of a parameter, developing robust quality control and assurance procedures is critical. These new sensors will be more power intensive, thus requiring the development of planning tools for increasing energy efficiency during missions. Given the significant growth in the highly distributed glider community, efforts are now focusing on the development mission planning tools to allow for efficient operation of glider fleets.

Variability and change in the west Antarctic Peninsula marine system: Research priorities and opportunities

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The Development and Validation of a Profiling Glider Deep ISFET-Based pH Sensor for High Resolution Observations of Coastal and Ocean Acidification

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Subsea Cable Tracking by Autonomous Underwater Vehicle with Magnetic Sensing Guidance

“…Therefore, the overall operating costs of ROVs are expensive, which hinders their applications. On the other hand, an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) without the support of mother vessels is becoming the most emerging vehicle in the field of marine inspection, such as offshore oil and gas exploration, underwater pipeline inspection, seafloor imaging and broad-area surveying of oceanic features [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ]. As a typical application case, a series of AUV prototypes for detecting and tracking the underwater cables, such as AQUA EXPLORER 1000 (AE-1000) and AQUA EXPLORER 2 (AE-2), completed some sea trials in Hokkaido and the Taiwan Strait [ 2 , 20 , 21 , 22 ].…”