Post date: Aug 02, 2015 3:22:7 PM
REMUS SharkCam: The hunter and the hunted from Woods Hole Oceanographic Inst. on Vimeo.
If one says undermanned vehicles, I always imagine the drones flying above the ground. Though, unmanned vehicles find very interesting applications for underwater. In the video above, a team from the Oceanographic Systems Lab at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution uses an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV), called REMUS SharkCam, to capture great white sharks in the wild. The UUV is able to track the tagged animal with minimal interference and communicates with the base at the distance of 100 meters. It looks like the communication is based on FSK or PSK, not sure, but I think they use the radio mentioned in this paper "Toward a Platform-Independent Acoustic Communications and Navigation System for Underwater Vehicles" by Sarah E. Webster et al.
PS: The video is definitely scary!
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The information about the vehicle are given in this link: https://www.whoi.edu/main/remus-sharkcam
"REMUS SharkCam is a specially outfitted REMUS-100 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) equipped with video cameras and navigational and scientific instrumentation that enable it to locate, track, and film up close a tagged marine animal, such as a North Atlantic white shark (great white). The vehicle is pre-programmed to home in on a signal from a transponder beacon attached to the animal at depths up to 100 meters (330 feet) and in a variety of patterns and configurations.
REMUS SharkCam uses an omni-directional ultra-short baseline (USBL) navigation system to determine the range, bearing, and depth of a tagged animal. It then closes on the animal to a pre-determined stand-off distance and position (left, right, above, or below) and to film it swimming and interacting with its environment with minimal interference with the animal's behavior. Another system on the vehicle permits it to communicate with scientists on the surface every 10 to 20 seconds and to receive commands from the surface to change speed, depth, or other mission parameters as necessary.
REMUS SharkCam has been tested on white sharks and basking sharks near Cape Cod and on white sharks near Guadalupe Island on the West Coast of Mexico. Plans are currently underway to use the system to follow other large marine animals such as sea turtles. Visual and numerical data from the vehicle promise to open up new ways of studying the behavior of marine animals in the wild interacting with their natural habitat.
Specifications
Length: 2.03m (80 in.)
Diameter: 19cm (7.5 in.)
Weight: 45kg (100 lbs.)
Maximum depth: 100m (328 ft.)
Maximum speed: 5 knots
Maximum range: 36 nautical miles (at 4.5 knots)
Mission duration: Up to 8 hours
Instrumentation:
6 REMUS GoPro video cameras providing 360° field-of-view
Omni-directional USBL navigation system
Acoustic communication system (ACOMMS), modem, and transducer
Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP)
GPS/Wi-fi/Iridium antenna
Conductivity and temperature probe"