Development of an unmanned marine vehicle for autonomous monitoring and observation tasks

该项目的目标是设计和建造一个创新的无人驾驶海洋潜水器，以满足近海作业者在监测、检查和剖面分析任务方面的需要。该潜水器将在水面上运行，并能够潜水，在200米深处的水柱中进行剖面分析。它将能够在西北大西洋恶劣的海洋环境中依靠自己的动力和指导运行长达数周。在水面和水下进行控制操作的能力将是无人驾驶海洋航行器的独特之处。部署在船上的传感器能够进行大气和海洋采样，使其非常适合许多不同类型的海洋研究。其他传感器套件，如光学和声学系统的组合，即激光雷达和声纳，将使车辆适用于当今和未来海上工业的一些关键应用领域。这些任务包括但不限于冰山剖面、海上结构检查（例如立管检查）或海上风电场支撑结构的自动化检查。 ** 这项工作的关键成果将是高度模块化的飞行器本身，在飞行器的具体设计要素中具有很大的价值，例如，使用浮力调节和主动矢量推力相结合的垂直剖面系统。模块化的有效载荷，即可互换的传感器套件，与潜水器的独特运动谱，即任意用户定义的水下运动轮廓配对，使该潜水器特别适合于人造和自然结构周围的检查和分析任务。** 本项目的第二个关键产出将是远程操作员/用户界面。该软件将使操作员能够计划、执行和监测使命的进展，并评估飞行器的状态，即健康监测。根据传感器套件的不同，所有数据都将接近实时地提供给用户，或者在高数据速率传感器的情况下，例如摄像头，将传输智能选择的数据子集。

The objective of this project is to design and build an innovative unmanned marine submersible surface craft to serve the needs of the off-shore operators in monitoring, inspection and profiling tasks.**The vehicle will operate at the surface and also have the ability to dive, profiling in the water column to a depths of 200m. It will be able to operate, on its own power and guidance, for periods up to several weeks in the harsh ocean environment of the Northwest Atlantic. The ability for controlled operations at the surface and underwater will be unique for a unmanned marine vehicle. The sensors deployed on the vehicle enable atmospheric and oceanographic sampling, making it well suited for many different types of marine research. Other sensor suites, such as a combination of optical and acoustic systems, i.e. LIDAR and SONAR, will make the vehicle suitable for some key application areas in today's and tomorrow's off-shore industry. These tasks include but are not limited to iceberg profiling, offshore structure inspections, e.g. the riser inspection, or the automated inspection of support structures for offshore wind parks. **The key result of the work will be the highly modular vehicle itself, with substantial value in the specific design elements of the vehicle, e.g. the vertical profiling system using a combination of buoyancy adjustment and active vectored thrust. The modular payload, i.e. interchangeable sensor suites, paired with the vehicle's unique spectrum of motion, i.e. an arbitrary user defined underwater motion profile, make this vehicle particularly suited for inspection and profiling task around man-made and natural structures. **The second key output of this project will be the remote operator/user interface. This software will enable operators to plan execute and monitor progress of a mission and assess the state of the vehicle, i.e. health monitoring. Depending on the sensor suite all data will be available in close to real-time to the users or in the case of high data-rate sensors, such as cameras, an intelligently selected subset of the data will be transmitted.************