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Robotic Gliders Soar Underwater

Posted by michael on from the soon-to-be-militarized dept.

zymano writes "Yahoo has this tech news on ocean gliders that can go on journeys for hundreds of miles and last for weeks using pumps that push ballast water in and out to subtly change their buoyancy. This enables them to alternately rise and fall through the ocean as they glide forward. Oh , $60,000 if you want one." See our previous stories for more information.

17 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Imagine the possibilities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd bet the US military would love these things. You could easily weaponize these things! From mine sweeping to hunting down enemy subs these things would rock.

    1. Re:Imagine the possibilities by randall_burns · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I tend to think the surveillance/tracking applications are more significant. There are already lots of way to deliver nukes. There aren't many ways to effectively guard against subs. Now, what is tricky here: these things are both their own problem and solution. It seems like guarding against these gliders might be most effectively done by the gliders themselves.


      I can imagine these things evolving into a rather effective means of monitoring ocean borders. It would simply become impossible to sneak into an appropriately guarded terroritory without detection.

  2. I wonder by mental_telepathy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What their towing capacity is? Can they run fiber out to my private island? Or, for the 20 foot ones, do rescue missions (Remember the trapped Russian Sailors in the sub?)

    1. Re:I wonder by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The US had the capability to save the Russian sailors on the Kursk. An article on Pravda claimed that no sailors survived the initial disaster. Later reports show letters that were written for a period of time after the inital explosision, but before the crew expired.

      It's a damn shame too. At the time that this happened, I don't think there would have been a US sub sailor who wouldn't have lent a hand. The DSRV crew would have had quite a feather in their cap. We are able to put the DSRV in the water anywhere in the world within 24 hours. We could have saved them, and we would have if we had been asked.

      http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/dsrv.htm

      Later,
      Jason from Seattle
      (ex sub sailor)

    2. Re:I wonder by ckaminski · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It is more than just "we don't have the capability". It's the fact that that same DSRV capability was designed to steal Russian submarine secrets from the bottom of the ocean. The fact that the Thresher accident gave the Navy a convenient cover story for building such tools was a slap in the face to the Russians. To have the U.S. use the DSRV technology that they built to steal Russian submarine secrets, but never got to use for said purpose (at least as far as I know), to actually save Russian submariners was just too much.

      We'd never let the Russians on a SS(B)N if it were reversed, either. We've (U.S.) have been talking about DSRV for 30+ years. You'd think the Russians would at least have some capability for this by now?

  3. Non military uses by Gothmolly · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How about free, albeit slow, cargo delivery? Get a tug to tow containers/gliders to a 'safe' distance from the traffic surrounding a port, point the glider at its destination, set its GPS coordinates, and let it go. 3 months later, your boxes of widgets arrive at their destination, where another tug picks up the stuff at the other end.

    No fuel
    No staff
    24x7 operation
    weather independent

    --
    I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
    1. Re:Non military uses by PPGMD · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Personally I highly doubt that it will work because during the Cold War the US deployed a series of Sonar nets through out the oceans to detect Soviet submarines.

      They are called the Sound Surveillance System (SOUS), word was that it could detect Soviet subs leaving their North Sea bases from the US.
      You can find more information here:
      http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/sosus .htm

  4. Message In A Bottle by tds67 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Wouldn't this be a neat way to send a message cross-Atlantic style from New York to the coast of France?

    Not very cost effective, but an interesting variation of "message in a bottle."

  5. other uses? by WegianWarrior · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This seems measuremade for 'dumb' drones that swim (or rather fly) around in the big blue ocean and collects data, but I wonder; could this technology be used for larger, manned crafts too? One possibility is a even more stealty military submarine* - possible with a more conventional propulsionsystem in adition to the ability to fly - but more civilian applications seems possible too. Perhaps giant cargovessels** and supertankers, pulling energy out of the seawater (RTFA) and cruising under the busy sealanes?

    _*) Submarines are plenty stealty already...
    **)The cargocarreing submarine is not a new idea, the germans launced Deutchland, and later the idea has resurfaced several itmes.

    --
    Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
  6. Long Distance Torpedoes for Terrorists? by savaget · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder if terrorist will try to adapt this to target cruise ships with explosives?

  7. Re:For $60,000 you can get the opposite... by Neil+Watson · · Score: 2, Interesting
    You need to understand how it works. By adjusting the vehicle's bouancy you give it velocity in the direction of up or down (water pressure for up and gravity for down). The fins or wings translate the up or down velocity partially to forward motion.

    The density of air it to small to generate enough up or down velocity for a land (air actually) to work.

    --
    UNIX/Linux Consulting
  8. Re:bewm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Well, first of all, if the 'torpedo' has wings, then any halfway decent sonar operator should be able to tell. It looks kind of like a torpedo, but it sure doesn't have the same sonar profile.

    Second, even if they did think that it was perhaps a new kind of torpedo, why would some other country use a new kind of weapon unless they were sure that it would work? You don't want to be giving your enemy munitions technology. When the device didn't self-destruct, they would be able to tell that it wasn't a weapon.

    Third, after examining the device, it would become abundantly clear that it wasn't a weapon at all.

    Now, assuming that their sonar operator is an idiot and that it somehow destroyed itself in a way that looked like a self-destruct mechanism, they would start to wonder whre it came from. Since whoever is firing at them obviously knows where they are, they would have no problem turning on their active sonar and finding ... exactly nothing. So, either it was some kind of cruise-torpedo (which does not currently exist), or something other than a torpedo.

    So, in short, any reasonably cautious world power would very quickly realize that it wasn't a weapon. If anybody decides to declare war, then they were just looking for an excuse to declare said war.

  9. Power from the water? by jbayes · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So I want to know how they manage to "sip" power from the warmth of the water. Last I checked, things didn't work like that.

    --

    "It sure was strange to see something on Usenet about me that didn't involve Klingon gang rape." -- Wil Wheaton

  10. Re:For $60,000 you can get the opposite... by Duckman5 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You mean something like this?
    They have an entire series of cars designed. You can view them all on the site. They don't seem to be in active production yet. I don't know when that will happen, but if you're really interested, you can sign up for information here.

  11. Re:Sierra Club? Greenpeace? by Dav3K · · Score: 2, Interesting

    On what basis? This thing is cleaner than any boat they could use to monitor these creatures, does not use military-grade sonar and is not the size of an aircraft carrier. In short, this is the ideal research vessel for these groups.

    Why go to court over a tool that can potentially be used to quantify the ecological damage we are doing to the depths? I would think that Sierra and Greenpeace are very excited about the new monitoring potential of this device.

  12. Midwater research could really use this? by ianscot · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The biggest habitat on earth is the ocean's "mid water," below where light can penetrate and above the abyssal depths. When biologists go down for a look there, they're trying to observe from a blind that's totally conspicuous, noisy, and thrashing around a ton. Even the latest scientific robot submersibles are pretty noisy hydraulic monstrosities -- the Monterey Bay Acquatic Research Institute's being decent examples.

    Still, even in Monterey Bay, MBARI has seen all kinds of new siphonophores (look halfway down) and so on -- really amazing animals that may be the biggest group of predators on earth, but that we know next to nothing about.

    A low-speed, quiet, long-term observation platform would be made to order for, to use that example, siphonophores: they're slow-moving, they hunt by drifting along extending toxic tentacles, but they're often disturbed by the existing robot subs. Or set this thing to watching a whale carcass as it floats around: scientists have a lot of ideas about the roles dead whales may play, but no way of really observing them long-term.

    The lack of speed isn't going to let you follow something like squid around; teuthids have a much better water jet system that'll let them outrun and outmaneuver almost anything we've got. But this'd give us a nice, quiet observation platform for most of the stuff that lives midwater and drifts -- which seems to be a huge share of the life on earth, and almost unexplored by science.

    --
    "Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
  13. i love simplicity by mantera · · Score: 2, Interesting


    I like this machine. It's amazing how the most beautiful solutions are often the simplest.

    It also reminds me of this...

    " It sometimes seems as if our planet has no secrets left - but deep beneath the great Antarctic ice sheet scientists have made an astonishing discovery. They've found one of the largest lakes in the world. It's very existence defies belief. Scientists are desperate to get into the lake because its extreme environment may be home to unique flora and fauna, never seen before, and NASA are excited by what it could teach us about extraterrestrial life. But 4 kilometres of ice stand between the lake and the surface, and breaking this seal without contaminating the most pristine body of water on the planet is possibly one of the greatest challenges science faces in the 21st century. transcript here

    The difference in mindset between the Soviet solution and the NASA solution was really interesting.