The USV/ASV industry has been very focused for years on “Force multipliers” which is great, but is really a euphamism for autonomous systems that aren’t reliable enough to be left alone without a mothership. Due to the emphasis on “force multipliers” the survey industry is still thinking small in terms of how to achieve serious breakthroughs in survey cost efficiency. Some noteable platforms, XOcean, Saildrone, and Drix (IXBlue), have acheived fully autonomous surveys without motherships but that still seems to be the rarity.
This talk would highlight the possibilities and new ways of thinking about, and planning, remote multi-beam surveys when leveraging small ASVs that are cost effective and reliable enough to truly change how these surveys are completed. As a part of this case study from recent surveys will be presented along with real data in terms of time, speed, coverage, and comparisons to traditional stats will be covered.
