Exploring beneath the PIG Ice Shelf with the Autosub3 AUV

McPhail, S.D.; Furlong, Maaten; Pebody, Miles; Perrett, James; Stevenson, Peter; Webb, A.; White, David

doi:10.1109/oceanse.2009.5278170

Cited by 48 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Broadly considered, this group also includes open-water recovery techniques in which personnel at the surface manually connect recovery lines and/or lifting mechanisms to the vehicle. Open-water recovery is used routinely in the open ocean, but has also been used for under-ice work as by Bellingham et al, 16 McPhail et al, 17 Williams et al 18 and McFarland et al 19 In a subsurface approach, Currie et al 20 present active grappling arm techniques for docking an AUV to a slow-moving submarine.…”

Section: Describe Rotating a Docking Cone And Tubementioning

confidence: 99%

The ARTEMIS under‐ice AUV docking system

Kimball¹,

Clark²,

Scully³

et al. 2017

Journal of Field Robotics

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The ARTEMIS docking system demonstrates autonomous docking capability applicable to robotic exploration of sub‐ice oceans and sub‐glacial lakes on planetary bodies, as well as here on Earth. In these applications, melted or drilled vertical access shafts restrict vehicle geometry as well as the in‐water infrastructure that may be deployed. The ability of the vehicle to return reliably and precisely to the access point is critical for data return, battery charging, and/or vehicle recovery. This paper presents the mechanical, sensor, and software components that make up the ARTEMIS docking system, as well as results from field deployment of the system to McMurdo Sound, Antarctica in the austral spring of 2015. The mechanical design of the system allows the vehicle to approach the dock from any direction and to pitch up after docking for recovery through a vertical access shaft. It uses only a small volume of in‐water equipment and may be deployed through a narrow vertical access shaft. The software of the system reduces position estimation error with a hierarchical combination of dead reckoning, acoustic aiding, and machine vision. The system provides critical operational robustness, enabling the vehicle to return autonomously and precisely to the access shaft and latch to the dock with no operator input.

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Section: Describe Rotating a Docking Cone And Tubementioning

confidence: 99%

The ARTEMIS under‐ice AUV docking system

Kimball¹,

Clark²,

Scully³

et al. 2017

Journal of Field Robotics

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show abstract

“…[6] or that it is physically impossible for the mother ship to escort the AUV, as in the sub ice-shelf operations of Autosub3 [8]. Hence the AUV has never used LBL or USBL systems for positioning during the execution of missions (although Range-Only positioning is used to position the AUV post its descent to the seabed mission [9]).…”

Section: B) Navigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges of using an AUV to find and map hydrothermal vent sites in deep and rugged terrains

McPhail

Stevenson

Pebody

et al. 2010

2010 IEEE/OES Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

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-In March 2010, the Autosub6000 AUV embarked on a cruise to discover, locate and map hydrothermal vent sites in an active spreading centre, the Cayman trough in the Caribbean sea. The environment provided the challenge of steep and rugged terrain together with deep water (in places greater than 5000 m).Autosub6000 is a flight class, hydrodynamically shaped AUV, with good endurance capability, making it well suited for searching for plume signals and mapping terrain over the required moderately large areas. However, it must fly at a forward speed greater than 0.8 ms-1 to achieve control, and so it requires a capable forward look collision avoid capability. Another potential challenge is navigation. To make best use of ship time, Autosub6000 missions are commonly conducted with neither the support ship in attendance, nor an acoustic transponder long baseline network. Hence positioning is dependent upon the AUV autonomous navigation (aided by a position fix after the AUV's descent to within ADCP bottom tracking range of the seabed).For the cruise on the UK research ship RRS James Cook, the AUV was equipped with sensors for EH (redox potential), turbidity, CTD, tri axis magnetometer, and an EM2000 multibeam sonar. The paper describes the Autosub6000 vehicle, its systems, capabilities, the missions it undertook in the deep Caribbean sea, and the discoveries it made. The missions, although ultimately very successful, were not without problems, with, for example, the steep seabed slopes, at times affecting the accuracy for the navigation system. The paper will also discuss these issues and how they might be addressed in the future.

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“…In this paper, we present high‐resolution bathymetry and sub‐bottom‐profiler data obtained by the Autosub3 AUV [ McPhail et al , ] beneath Pine Island Glacier Ice Shelf (hereafter PIGIS), West Antarctica, during January 2009 and February–March 2014. Using these data, we explore the nature of seafloor bedforms and sediment properties and assess processes associated with retreat from a former pinning point during the mid‐twentieth century.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High‐resolution sub‐ice‐shelf seafloor records of twentieth century ungrounding and retreat of Pine Island Glacier, West Antarctica

et al. 2017

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Pine Island Glacier Ice Shelf (PIGIS) has been thinning rapidly over recent decades, resulting in a progressive drawdown of the inland ice and an upstream migration of the grounding line. The resultant ice loss from Pine Island Glacier (PIG) and its neighboring ice streams presently contributes an estimated ∼10% to global sea level rise, motivating efforts to constrain better the rate of future ice retreat. One route toward gaining a better understanding of the processes required to underpin physically based projections is provided by examining assemblages of landforms and sediment exposed over recent decades by the ongoing ungrounding of PIG. Here we present high‐resolution bathymetry and sub‐bottom‐profiler data acquired by autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) surveys beneath PIGIS in 2009 and 2014, respectively. We identify landforms and sediments associated with grounded ice flow, proglacial and subglacial sediment transport, overprinting of lightly grounded ice‐shelf keels, and stepwise grounding line retreat. The location of a submarine ridge (Jenkins Ridge) coincides with a transition from exposed crystalline bedrock to abundant sediment cover potentially linked to a thick sedimentary basin extending upstream of the modern grounding line. The capability of acquiring high‐resolution data from AUV platforms enables observations of landforms and understanding of processes on a scale that is not possible in standard offshore geophysical surveys.

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Exploring beneath the PIG Ice Shelf with the Autosub3 AUV

Cited by 48 publications

References 14 publications

The ARTEMIS under‐ice AUV docking system

The ARTEMIS under‐ice AUV docking system

Challenges of using an AUV to find and map hydrothermal vent sites in deep and rugged terrains

High‐resolution sub‐ice‐shelf seafloor records of twentieth century ungrounding and retreat of Pine Island Glacier, West Antarctica

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