Underwater Robots for Everyone 145
Dirak writes "A small 112-pound ocean glider named Spray is the first autonomous underwater vehicle to cross the Gulf Stream underwater. Launched September 11, 2004, it has been slowly making 12 miles per day measuring various properties of the ocean. Spray spent 15 minutes three times a day on the surface to relay its position and information about ocean conditions and then glided back down to 3,300-feet depth ." And reader RoboFreak writes "Two Computer Science students at Brigham Young University-Hawaii have developed a Low Cost Autonomous Underwater Vehicle. The students also entered their robot, LUV, in the AUVSI and ONR's 7th International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition at San Diego, CA and competed against top Ivy-League teams. Their robot received recognition in the form of an award at this competition. This robot was designed with a budget of only about $600 and seems to be the cheapest AUV around. One of the AUV designers' interview conducted by Amit Kr Chanda of The Times of India is available here."
Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
Not for everybody (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not for everybody (Score:4, Insightful)
Cheers,
Craig
The design is astounding (Score:4, Insightful)
Talk about clever design, this is like the Burt Rutan of underwater. I wonder if we'll see new developments on this technology, like submarine tourism, the underwater X-prize or something like that.
Smugglers would love this... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the vein of the shotgun toting robot, it might make an effective military weapon as well. A tiny, autonomous sub that could navigate a pre-programmed course and deliver a nuke, launch torpedoes and drop mines at a predesignated target. Sort of an underwater cruise missile or recon drone.
Re:Not so funny scenario (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:These should be banned (Score:3, Insightful)
Since they don't need to surface, they could hug the bottom of the ocean floor, coming to land somewhere convenient to detonate a payload.
Or they could attach themselves to the sides of ships and wait to stop moving (probably close to a harbor).
Why its cheap (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember that with autonomous underwater vehicles you can throw away requirements for safety of the operator and equipment to keep the driver alive. Couple that with the philosiphy that you don't care how fast it goes as long as it does science and goes somewhere eventually, and you end up with a super cheap robot.
Re:Finally (Score:4, Insightful)
Stuff is cheap to make here, Why not make the mistakes cheaply so that when we go to make the vehicle to explorer other planets. (some moons have a liquid substance) We already have the knowhow and only have a few things to re-engineer.
Some ask why it was so cheap for the spaceshipone to be built and flown.. Well thats because we already spent tons of money figuring out how to do alot of the stuff they did on the spaceshipone. So to say that America (or any other country, I do have to give the Russians credit) has been wasting money on the space program, and then try to use the price of spaceshipone as proof doesn't go over too well.
So as we build on our collective experience's/knowledge things get cheaper.
Same applies to alot of the objects we use everyday.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:2, Insightful)
This is not economically feasible for terrorists by any stretch of the imagination. I attended the 2004 AUVSI underwater competition and while Brigham Young's appearance and attempt was commendable, the fact is that their $600 vehicle couldn't even travel in a straight line for the 15 feet needed to pass through the velidation gate. They took last place overall, with the exception of a team that was disqualified. Now, I don't want it to seem like I'm disparaging them, they had the smallest budget of any team in attendence and the smallest team as well. Brigham Young probably learned a great deal by attending the competition and will probably come back a lot stronger next year.
The fact is, to really have a functional AUV you must be prepared to spend $50k and probably a lot more than that if you want any sort of long duration capability. Why bother creating fleet of AUVs for terrorism when you can just make a suicide boat-bomb that would pack a much bigger punch.
The theat of terrorism is greatly exagerated and sensationalized in nearly every aspect of our daily lives these days. It's quite unfortunate.