Robot Submarine To Dive Deep In the Caribbean

Roland Piquepaille writes "According to BBC News, a new UK autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), Autosub6000, will soon start to explore the world's deepest undersea volcanoes, located in the Caribbean. Autosub6000 has a range of up to 1,000 kilometers and has a maximum operating depth of 6,000 meters. It is 5.5 meters long, has a diameter of 0.9 meters, and is equipped with a high-performance GPS unit. For these two expeditions, each close to a month long, Autosub6000 will be joined by the Isis remotely operated vehicle, which is able to operate at a depth of 6,000 meters and grab animal specimens. Researchers from the National Oceanography Center in Southampton will lead these missions. They expect that 'one in every two animals they come across will be a species new to science' once the robots reach a depth of 3,000 meters." Specifications for the submarine (PDF) are also available.

That's been around for years.

[Toe, The (545098)]

There's been a submarine exploring the Cayman Trough [atlantisadventures.com] for years now.

.
.
.
. ;)

Video

[Kent Recal (714863)]

They also have exclusive video footage [is.gd].

mods missed both the wink and the link ;)

[paulthomas (685756)]

Looks like someone missed both the link and the winking emoticon.

At a depth of about 60 feet, which is quite comfortable given life support, I was a little startled when that very submarine snuck up on me scuba diving near Sunset House.

GPS?

[jeffb (2.718) (1189693)]

Wouldn't it have to be awfully high-performance GPS to work under 6km of water?

The GPS is only used on the surface

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

The robot will use sonar, compass and dead reckoning underwater. When it surfaces it can correct itself with GPS.

GPS will work down to a foot or so if you have the right antenna.

Re:

[monsul (1342167)]

GPS will work down to a foot or so if you have the right antenna.

And sooner than later, deeper than a foot: Underwater GPS patent [slashdot.org]

Granted, will probably be used only for military applications, but would be quite cool to have one of those while scuba diving

Re:

[strabes (1075839)]

What happens when you dive/dig so deep that you actually pass through the center of the earth? Would it just switch over to a different satellite and say you're in China? (because China is obviously directly opposite the USA). Start a sentence with "because."

Re:

[RabidMoose (746680)]

"Because" you don't seem to know how big the Earth actually is, I'll just explain why this is nowhere NEAR that happening. These subs are going to about 6,000 meters. The radius of the earth is about 6,000,000 meters.

Re:

[strabes (1075839)]

I know; I was going for Funny. And I wrote that thing about "because" because the previous sentence I started with because. I didn't mean to tell the person who replied to do so, haha.

Re:

[Gilmoure (18428)]

What if you're in the exact center of the earth? How does the triangulation work there? And can you use the metallic core as a gigantic antenna?

Re:

[strabes (1075839)]

Maybe we should ask Brendan Fraser?

That isn't gps working underwater

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

The GPS places a sonar station and sonar places the vehicle. A few simple calculations and you have a GPS position extended to an underwater location.

Re:That isn't gps working underwater

[scdeimos (632778)]

The sub uses GPS for positioning on and near the surface. The rest of the way it's using inertial navigation. USL@NOC is also working on multibeam sonar so that the robot can assess its position using geologic features on the bottom (up to about 200m away I expect) for position keeping in a current.

Re:GPS?

[MacJedi (173)]

They're likely communicating with a surface bouys over a more appropriate frequency. The bouys then do the actual communicating with the satellites. See, eg: http://www.underwater-gps.com/uk/technology-GIB-concept.php [underwater-gps.com]

Re:

[MacJedi (173)]

Buoys, rather. *Sigh*.

Re:

[CmdrGravy (645153)]

Or "boo-ees" as Americans insist on calling them !

Animal specimens?

[Cyberax (705495)]

Well, I hope they debugged their image-recognition code.

In any case, I wouldn't like to be a scuba-diver near this vehicle.

Re:Animal specimens?

[magarity (164372)]

If you scuba dive to 6k feet, you're bad enough not to care about this sub. On the other hand, I hope it doesn't grab the last female of some highly endangered species that was just about to make a remarkable recovery.

Re:

[Korin43 (881732)]

I very much doubt that a species with one female left is likely to recover.

Re:Animal specimens?

[NoPantsJim (1149003)]

The Smurfs seem to be doing okay.

Gratuitous Venture Brothers quote:

Henchman 24: Come on, they have one female servicing a large group of males. That implies a species that lays eggs!
Henchman 21: Oh my god, you're crazy, they are so obviously mammals!
Henchman 24: Please, she'd be in estrus 24/7 if she didn't lay eggs!
Henchman 21: Smurfs don't lay eggs! I won't tell you this again. Papa Smurf has a fucking beard, they're mammals!

Re:

[magarity (164372)]

That implies a species that lays eggs ... Papa Smurf has a fucking beard, they're mammals
 
Smurfs are therefore monotremes [wikipedia.org].

Re:

[aliquis (678370)]

meters, not feets.

Better to grip the last male? You want all the females of all soon to be extinct animals?

Robot goes down

[nategoose (1004564)]

I like my headline better.

Re:

[Fear the Clam (230933)]

Computer says no.

As long as they don't bring a nuke down there.

[FlyingSquidStudios (1031284)]

It really pisses the aliens off.

Re:

[strabes (1075839)]

Come on, Nessie isn't an alien. Oh wait, that's in England.

Re:

[Evil Pete (73279)]

I think he might have been referring to The Abyss [wikipedia.org].

Re:

[strabes (1075839)]

You're right; sorry about that.

Re:

[mike2R (721965)]

And don't forget the various Crown Dependencies [wikipedia.org] and British overseas territories [wikipedia.org] which are not part of the United Kingdom. Of course residents or almost all of them have British citizenship so can be referred to as British (although specific 'local difficulties' may make the term offensive to some).

Confused yet?

Lyrics

[PatTheGreat (956344)]

In the town where I was born
Lived a man who sailed to sea
And he told us of his life
In the land of submarines

So we sailed up to the sun
Till we found the sea of green
And we lived beneath the waves
In our Robot submarine

We all live in a Robot submarine
Robot submarine, Robot submarine
We all live in a Robot submarine
Robot submarine, Robot submarine

And our friends are all on board
Many more of them live next door
And the band begins to play

We all live in a Robot submarine
Robot submarine, Robot submarine
We all live in a Robot submarine
Robot submarine, Robot submarine

[Full speed ahead, Mr. Parker, full speed ahead!
Full speed over here, sir!
Action station! Action station!
Aye, aye, sir, fire!
Heaven! Heaven!]

As we live a life of ease (A life of ease)
Everyone of us (Everyone of us) has all we need (Has all we need)
Sky of blue (Sky of blue) and sea of green (Sea of green)
In our Robot (In our Robot) submarine (Submarine, ha, ha)

We all live in a Robot submarine
Robot submarine, Robot submarine
We all live in a Robot submarine
Robot submarine, Robot submarine
We all live in a Robot submarine
Robot submarine, Robot submarine
We all live in a Robot submarine
Robot submarine, Robot submarine

Re:

[Jeff DeMaagd (2015)]

I think you should email this to Jonathan Coulton.

Why only 6000m?

[B5_geek (638928)]

Knowing nothing of the engineering involved here I have a laymans question. Why is it limited to 6km? Why can't they fill the sub with a non-conductive liquid like mineral oil, thus negating the effect of pressure on the hull of the sub? If they are carefull about the electronics that they install, they can make sure that there are no air pockets that can be compressed.

Seems much too simple not to work, so why doesn't it?

Re:

[jcnnghm (538570)]

Must have been a design decision. Subs, even manned subs, have been to the deepest part of the ocean, the Challenger Deep. It's about 11km down IIRC, and life exists at the bottom. There aren't any subs that can dive to that depth today though.

Chances are it's considerably easier and less expensive to build a sub that doesn't dive as deep. Plus, if what you want to study is only under 6km of water, it doesn't make much sense to design for anything else.

Re:

[Junior J. Junior III (192702)]

I'd venture to guess that a lot of the electronics are too delicate to be able to survive such crushing pressures, and thus such a pressure-equalized submersible would not be feasible.

Re:

[PMuse (320639)]

Mod parent up. The hulls of manned subs are designed to maintain a low-pressure environment inside to protect components (e.g., people) that can't handle high pressure.

In an unmanned sub, you can adopt a hull that doesn't keep the pressure out (i.e., one that just keeps out the conductive, corrosive water), but then all your interior components must withstand the high pressure. Components that deform when compressed may not be usable then.

Re:

[Athena1101 (582706)]

I work on AUVs for a US company. 6000m pretty much covers 99% of the ocean floor; it's not worth the engineering tradeoffs to go deeper. And yeah, filling pressure vessels with mineral oil is one strategy, but honestly the bigger issues are power and navigation.

Re:Why only 6000m?

[Athena1101 (582706)]

Many commercial AUVs are rated to, at most, 6000m. The tradeoffs there are business: basically none of the customers want it any deeper, because, like I said, that depth rating can handle almost the entire ocean. So if this group's main driver is availability of technology and components to work from to build their AUV, they're probably willing to focus on just the 3000m-6000m range to take advantage of that. This isn't to say it's not worth it at all, and there are vehicles that can go deeper. But the question was asked, "Why are these guys limited to 6000m?" It's not technologically infeasible to go deeper, but practically speaking, they don't need to in order to get the information they need. Tradeoffs.

Re:

[scdeimos (632778)]

Since you're in the field perhaps you can answer my question as well... The linked PDF in the summary shows a speed-vs-range graph that has a linear falloff. I would have expected drag to increase on the square of the speed, as it does in aircraft, and so the power requirement to increase on the square as well. (i.e.: 2 x speed causes 4 x drag and 4 x power requirement, so 1/4 of range.) What would I be missing here?

Re:

[scdeimos (632778)]

Never mind... twice the speed for 1/4 of the time would give you half the range. I just wasn't thinking fourth-dimensionally. I have a real problem with that. :)

Re:

[Ruie (30480)]

Knowing nothing of the engineering involved here I have a laymans question. Why is it limited to 6km? Why can't they fill the sub with a non-conductive liquid like mineral oil, thus negating the effect of pressure on the hull of the sub? If they are carefull about the electronics that they install, they can make sure that there are no air pockets that can be compressed.

Seems much too simple not to work, so why doesn't it?

They actually partially do it - the PDF boasts that the lithium polymer battery pack is not housed in pressurized compartment.

Pressure at 6km is around 60 mega pascals [wikipedia.org] which will deform titanium or glass by about 0.05-0.1 percent [wikipedia.org]. Plastics deform more, in a few percent range. This will pretty much rip apart a conventional PCB. Accordingly the submarine has a titanium pressure vessel for electronics.

One could, theoretically, imagine a loosely mounted design [wikipedia.org] that can withstand high pressures, but it would cer

Iä Iä, Cthulhu fhtagn!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Even if the stars aren't aligned, just poke the Great Old Ones with a nifty unmanned submarine! :)

one in every two animals a new species

[by Anonymous Coward]

This is the exciting part to me. While all the talk recently is of life in space, Mars etc, the possibility of finding 'alien' life down in our oceans is realistic and has incredible implications. There are sulphur eating methanogens down there that live in water temperatures of >400 degrees Celsius, things that redefine what 'life' is. Some of these could yield new materials, new medicines, or fresh insights into evolution.

Re:

[SoupIsGoodFood_42 (521389)]

I should point out for people not familiar with this why that's incredible: It's a source of life that doesn't rely on the Sun in any way. Before, even the deepest deep sea creatures lived off the sun as they fed off what comes down from above -- when they're not eating each other, that is.

Cue Wicked Witch of the West...

[jmichaelg (148257)]

I wonder if the robot is smart enough not to scald itself if it comes across vents that are hotter than its design specs. The article says some of the vents reach 500C. Lead-free solder melts at half that temperature.

 

R'lyeh

[Narpak (961733)]

I seriously hope they don't find the lost city of R'lyeh and awake Cthulhu.

Jokes on Them

[lordfoul (108260)]

I put a ROBOTS.TXT down there last month.

Re:

[Icarium (1109647)]

The deep sea spiders are pissed, but the submarines don't seem to care...

Is there a secret secondary mission?

[Shipwack (684009)]

I wonder if there is any intention to do any deep sea reconnaissance on lost subs or sunken ships? Maybe not at the extreme 6K level, but a bit closer than that. Wouldn't be the first time that deep sea exploration was used as a cover for something else... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USNS_Glomar_Explorer_(T-AG-193) [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[thermian (1267986)]

Unlikely, the secret/disguised deep sea missions were cold war era events.

These days, countries would want to boast about what they could do when going that deep.

In those cases where there was a reason to keep it secret, the mission wouldn't be announced in the first place.

However ...

[PPH (736903)]

...which is able to operate at a depth of 6,000 meters and grab animal specimens.
.... They expect that 'one in every two animals they come across will be a species new to science'...

However, one in four animals they grab will have a mother that is 20 meters long and has tentacles that can crush a robot submarine.