As future ocean observation systems become increasingly dependent on autonomous technologies that can operate over-the-horizon for long periods of time and/or be deployed in fleets or swarms, or even be resident in the field, it is important to think about more than just the vehicles but the complete marine autonomous system (MAS). Including the subsea infrastructure to support operations.
There are a multitude of challenges in MAS operations, from how the vehilces are launched/recovered (L&R) to ensuring they can carry enough power to conducting longer endurance missions while carrying a a useful lpayload, to ensuring that the data is passed to the end-user effectively to enable appropriate decisions and actions.
Subsea docking of AUVs can solve challenges with inherently risky surface L&R as well as enabling subsea charging and data transfer. This enables persistent monitoring, real-time actionable information delivery and remote command and control.
Through this presentation we will explore subsea docking methods for AUVs and highlight how Sonardyne’s acoustic and new innovations in optical technologies can, and have, been used to enable the accurate navigation, positioning and communications required for these complex operations.
