A consortium made up of ASV Global (ASV), Sonardyne International Ltd., the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) and SeeByte has developed what it describes as a “long endurance, multi-vehicle, autonomous survey solution.”

The entities worked together on the three-year ‘Autonomous Surface and Sub-surface Survey System’ collaborative project, with a goal of delivering an integrated system to perform “low cost, full water column marine surveys using multiple autonomous systems.” The project recently culminated with a two-week trial in Scotland’s Loch Ness.

During trials in and on the loch, Sonardyne’s USBL acoustic positioning and AvTrak telemetry systems allowed ASV’s C-Worker 5 autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) to locate, track, command and control the NOC’s Autosub Long Range (ALR) AUV. RF communications transmitted position and mission status updates to shore.

“This project has enabled ASV to extend its survey capability; pairing an AUV with our already proven survey platform, the C-Worker 5, has opened up new opportunities for our technology,” says James Cowles, Commercial Technical Sales Manager.

“We have been able to leverage the experience gained from this project into commercial applications, such as our recent delivery of eight ASVs to Ocean Infinity for AUV tracking.”

With a need to collect more data from the marine environment, marine autonomous systems have to be at sea for longer. The consortium say that by putting an AUV or UUV with an ASV, positioning accuracy, which is important for high-quality survey data, can be optimized on missions that last weeks, even months, without the need for manned surface vessel support.

The consortium add that this “game changing technology” can open up “dramatic cost savings” in a variety of maritime applications, from pipeline survey to scientific coral exploration and deep water seabed mining.

“We’ve shown that our technology can enable an AUV to operate autonomously with an ASV and offload its Solstice side-scan survey data using our BlueComm high-speed optical modem,” says Geraint West, Global Business Manager, Oceanographic, Sonardyne.

“Proving acoustic enabled multi-vehicle tracking, command and control, with high-speed through-water data transfer also lays the ground work for long-range, over-the-horizon autonomous underwater vehicle survey operations.”