Reflections on a decade of autonomous underwater vehicles operations for marine survey at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics

Abstract

This paper describes insights gained from a decade of autonomous marine systems development at the University of Sydney’s Australian Centre for Marine Robotics. Over the course of this time, we have deployed numerous vehicles and imaging platforms in support of applications in engineering science, marine ecology, archaeology and geoscience. We have operated an Australia-wide benthic observing program designed to deliver precisely navigated, repeat imagery of the seafloor. This initiative makes extensive use of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) to collect high-resolution stereo imagery, multibeam sonar and water column measurements on an annual or semi-annual basis at sites around Australia, spanning the full latitudinal range of the continent from tropical reefs in the north to temperate regions in the south. We have also contributed to expeditions to document coral bleaching, cyclone recovery, submerged neolithic settlement sites, ancient shipwrecks, methane seeps and deepwater hydrothermal vents. We briefly consider how automated tools for working with this imagery have facilitated the resulting science outcomes.

Introduction

Recent years have seen significant advances in the use of autonomous and remotely operated vehicles for seafloor survey. Work undertaken over the past decade at the University of Sydney’s Australian Centre for Marine Robotics has focused on the development and deployment of numerous vehicles and imaging platforms in support of applications in engineering science, marine ecology, archaeology and geoscience. As part of this work, we have operated an Australia-wide benthic observing program designed to deliver precisely navigated, repeat imagery of the seafloor. This initiative makes extensive use of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) to collect high-resolution stereo imagery, multibeam sonar and water column measurements on an annual or semi-annual basis at sites around Australia, spanning the full latitudinal range of the continent from tropical reefs in the north to temperate regions in the south. We have also contributed to expeditions to document coral bleaching, cyclone recovery, submerged neolithic settlement sites, ancient shipwrecks, methane seeps and deepwater hydrothermal vents. We briefly consider how automated tools for working with this imagery have facilitated the resulting science outcomes. This paper provides an overview of this program of work and illustrates how these tools are being used in a routine manner in support of these programs.

The remainder of this paper is organised as follows. Section 2 provides an overview of the platforms that have been used to support this work while Section 3 describes the core capabilities used to deliver geo-referenced benthic imagery and associated data products. Section 4 outlines applications of these systems during deployments conducted at sites around Australia and internationally and illustrates how our end users are using this data. Section 5 presents concluding remarks and considers future directions for this program.