Future Vision for Autonomous Ocean Observations

Abstract

Whitt et al. Future of Autonomous Ocean Observations reductions. Cost reductions could enable order-of-magnitude increases in platform operations and increase sampling resolution for a given level of investment. Energy harvesting technologies should be integral to the system design, for sensors, platforms, vehicles, and docking stations. Connections are needed between the marine energy and ocean observing communities to coordinate among funding sources, researchers, and end users. Regional teams should work with global organizations such as IOC/GOOS in governance development. International networks such as emerging glider operations (EGO) should also provide a forum for addressing governance. Networks of multiple vehicles can improve operational efficiencies and transform operational patterns. There is a need to develop operational architectures at regional and global scales to provide a backbone for active networking of autonomous platforms.

Antifouling Strategies for Sensors Used in Water Monitoring: Review and Future Perspectives

“…Water monitoring instrumentation plays an increasingly important role in current societal issues such as energy management, ecosystem health, raw materials of the ocean and the ocean’s impact on climate, weather and food security [ 10 ]. Sensors in industrial, municipal and environmental monitoring are advancing our understanding of science, aiding developments in process automatization and control and support real-time decisions in emergency situations.…”

“…The vision of coastal sensor networks for real-time decision support and marine networks for ocean observations is increasingly tangible. Advanced deployment platforms now exist to support various monitoring needs and include buoys, mini buoys, autonomous surface vehicles, buoyance engine vehicles (floats and gliders) and thruster-driven subsurface vehicles [ 10 , 133 ]. In this context, sensor antifouling strategies play a critical role in present and future sensor networks.…”

“…In the context of ocean monitoring, biofouling has long been considered a limiting factor and is recognised as one of the main obstacles to autonomous environmental monitoring in aquatic environments [ 8 , 9 ]. Much of the equipment currently used to monitor coastal and ocean waters relies on sensors incorporated into various platforms like buoys, subsea moorings and surface and subsurface vehicles [ 10 ]. All immersed components, including operational components (membranes, optical windows and electrodes), housings and mooring components are subject to biofouling and prone to irreversible damage [ 11 ].…”

Guidance for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles in Confined Semistructured Environments

“…Although underwater navigation is a relatively consolidated field of research, most of the research in this field addresses open water environments, or, alternatively, partially confined environments such as submarine canyons or water masses under layers of superficial ice [ 18 , 19 ]. These environments, although undoubtedly very challenging, show structural characteristics that do not represent stringent constraints regarding the shape, size, and maneuverability of the robot: this is reflected, for instance, on the forward-moving torpedo-shaped design [ 20 ] followed by the vast majority of corresponding works [ 21 ].…”

“…In open water or semiconstrained environments, in addition, it is possible to establish communication paths with surface stations and/or vehicles, providing the UV with different levels of assistance. In this line, and mostly through the use of a physical tether providing a high bidirectional throughput between the UV and the assisting platform and allowing the continuous or intermittent intervention of a human operator, ROVs or UVs with supervised autonomy, respectively, have been extensively used [ 18 , 22 , 23 ]; a fast communication channel with the computational resources of a surface station could also be used to derive part of the computational tasks of the UVs to the latter. Linked to this capacity to establish a communication channel, in this case an acoustic channel, with GPS-enabled surface platforms, the UVs can obtain accurate positioning using long or short baseline (LBL/SBL) techniques [ 19 , 24 ].…”