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Underwater Robots for Everyone
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."
Its nice to see a few bucks thrown towards exploring our own planet. Sure its great to look for life on other planets, but there are still "creatures of the deep" right here waiting to be discovered. Granted this particular craft didn't have life exploration but this technology could be mass produced at that price and scour the oceans for all kinds of goodies.
This is great for people who want to do underwater stuff cheaply, but it isn't for everyone. When was the last time you needed an underwater robot? There are lots of people who would be able to put these to good use. There are people using underwater robots to log dead trees that were submerged by the construction of dams. Using lots of cheaper underwater robots could be a better way of doing underwater exploration than a few expensive but beefier robots.
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.
Just think, an autonomous drug smuggling robot sub that could drop its cargo if the coast guard gets uncomfortably close, then go back and retrieve it later. And even if it were captured or destroyed, there would be nobody on board to turn state's evidence against their boss. (Presumably it would automatically wipe its memory if tampered with) About the only way to catch the smugglers in the act would be to covertly track the robot to the rendezvous point.
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.
My rights don't need management.
On the other hand ... being able to place underwater mines in that fashion could be valuable. Forget the wheels: just send a flock of smartbots to cover a shipping lane or a port. They might have to surface every now and then for instructions and then hide on the bottom again. If they get told: "detonate when any ship meeting sonar profile AA93 comes within range" or something like that things would get difficult for the bad guys.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
If there were hundreds of them, how would you know which ones were dangerous and which were decoys?
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).
sigs, as if you care.
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.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
"A few hundred of these, and oil transport in supertankers will no longer be feasible."
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.