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Tiny Autonomous Submersible
dAzED1 writes "The BBC is reporting that Australian researchers have built a 40cm, self-controlling submarine that can dive to 5,000 meters. It's small enough that there is concern it could simply be eaten, or worse, used by the military. My question is, at 1 m/s, how does it get to 5km before the 1-day battery dies?"
How does it do it in a day? Easy
beacuase thats about an hour and a half?
...ThinkGeek will be selling this unit within 3 weeks complete with an 8ft "cubicle acquarium" to drive it around in! ;-)
-psy
I'm getting one for sure!
Then I'll be heading to Lake Tahoe to discover whether or not the legends are true...
How stupid do you feel after getting basic 10-year-old maths wrong in your slashdot submission :-P
Daniel
Carpe Diem
If hungry sea creatures are a problem, use some of that battery power to shock them, or shotgun-shell primers to scare them off.
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1 m/s * 86400 seconds in a day = 86.4km. I don't think the battery is the problem, it's the pressures past 5k.
11*43+456^2
There is more on the Serafina home page.
Getting to 5000m should not be a problem of time, at 1 m/s, even though I wander whether that speed is possible vertically? Probably a bigger problem is communicating over 5km - maybe you need "relays" at intermediate depths. It seems that groups of them can act as a sort of network. I didnt see a lot of details on such things as coms distance, etc, tho I didnt dig very deep.
As a toy for $700, I would even consider buying one.
Hmmm, I wonder if you could mount a laser.. What do you mean, why?
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
My question is, at 1 m/s, how does it get to 5km before the 1-day battery dies?
Well, lets use some basic arithmetic. 1m/s is 3600 meters per hour. That's 3.6 km per hour. There are 24 hours in a day, so if the battery lasts that long, and it goes 10 km round trip (5 km up and down), what is the problem?
How much battery power do you think it takes to sink into the ocean?
i just ate a 50cm submersible for breakfast, i thin i'll pass.
it was built by a pudgy, paranoid guy in a home-built cave in some backwater Canadian costal town. They wanted to interview the creator of this device, but all he would say is some incoherent mumblings about the "damned Winnebago people"
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Here is the main site...
I would like to know how it performs at sea trials. In monster currents, and how much draw the extra currents add. This would be awesome combined with cold fusion, but then again so would cold fusion alone.
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Why "or worse"? Giving our military better technology is often times the best way to avoid becoming entangled in lengthy conflicts and reliance on poor intelligence.
Owned by your own stupidity!
couldn't they use a weitght that is released when the automatic water-droid gets a certain depth? Wouldn't that give it soem natural downward motion instead of usign thrusters.... jsut spinning my head on the question in the post.... my .02c
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
... a "fantastic voyage" if you will! Mwa-hey.
Admit it. You were thinking it.
on a more serious note - you could design the craft to be neutrally bouyant at 4.9km depths. It will sink until it gets to that point, if need be, and a trigger could turn it on. Then you could go 4.9km linear horizontal, power down and pop a gas bladder to surface.
kulakovich
Who says this thing needs to start at 0? How about if it was released from a sub, or shot down to a few km below sea level using a torpedo or something?
Pretty Pictures!
I imagine that one day there will be thousands of these robots constantly monitoring the ocean's vitals...
I imagine them being rechargable on their own, too. What if they were covered with solar panels and when the battery went dead it would float to the top and recharge on sunlight...
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Poster commented about ballast weights 2 hours before parent post.
Being able to perform descents and ascents without running the maneuvering motors would allow access to the full depth capability of the hull. You would have to add hardware to extract power from the slipstream during buoyant maneuvers; given that this would probably not extend the time-at-depth by a huge amount (and might decrease powered speed and range), it might not be worth it.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
While not autonomous (or wireless, though it could be made so), and not as maneuverable, this site shows how to build as small or smaller submersibles, from PVC pipe and other off-the-shelf (OTS) parts...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
These are R/C, thus wireless (but not autonomous)...sorry.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
In fact, the guy was quite right, but you won't see it in his post...
But if you go on the official website you'll see that the autonomy for "permanent manoeuvring" is only two hours.
Hence the problem.
The solution would be to use weights or ballasts.
But that's a different question.