Robot Submarine To Dive Deep In the Caribbean

Roland Piquepaille writes "According to BBC News, a new UK autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), Autosub6000, will soon start to explore the world's deepest undersea volcanoes, located in the Caribbean. Autosub6000 has a range of up to 1,000 kilometers and has a maximum operating depth of 6,000 meters. It is 5.5 meters long, has a diameter of 0.9 meters, and is equipped with a high-performance GPS unit. For these two expeditions, each close to a month long, Autosub6000 will be joined by the Isis remotely operated vehicle, which is able to operate at a depth of 6,000 meters and grab animal specimens. Researchers from the National Oceanography Center in Southampton will lead these missions. They expect that 'one in every two animals they come across will be a species new to science' once the robots reach a depth of 3,000 meters." Specifications for the submarine (PDF) are also available.

Comments

Robot goes down

[nategoose]

I like my headline better.

Lyrics

[PatTheGreat]

In the town where I was born
Lived a man who sailed to sea
And he told us of his life
In the land of submarines

So we sailed up to the sun
Till we found the sea of green
And we lived beneath the waves
In our Robot submarine

We all live in a Robot submarine
Robot submarine, Robot submarine
We all live in a Robot submarine
Robot submarine, Robot submarine

And our friends are all on board
Many more of them live next door
And the band begins to play

We all live in a Robot submarine
Robot submarine, Robot submarine
We all live in a Robot submarine
Robot submarine, Robot submarine

[Full speed ahead, Mr. Parker, full speed ahead!
Full speed over here, sir!
Action station! Action station!
Aye, aye, sir, fire!
Heaven! Heaven!]

As we live a life of ease (A life of ease)
Everyone of us (Everyone of us) has all we need (Has all we need)
Sky of blue (Sky of blue) and sea of green (Sea of green)
In our Robot (In our Robot) submarine (Submarine, ha, ha)

We all live in a Robot submarine
Robot submarine, Robot submarine
We all live in a Robot submarine
Robot submarine, Robot submarine
We all live in a Robot submarine
Robot submarine, Robot submarine
We all live in a Robot submarine
Robot submarine, Robot submarine

Why only 6000m?

[B5_geek]

Knowing nothing of the engineering involved here I have a laymans question. Why is it limited to 6km? Why can't they fill the sub with a non-conductive liquid like mineral oil, thus negating the effect of pressure on the hull of the sub? If they are carefull about the electronics that they install, they can make sure that there are no air pockets that can be compressed.

Seems much too simple not to work, so why doesn't it?

Re:Why only 6000m?

[Athena1101]

Many commercial AUVs are rated to, at most, 6000m. The tradeoffs there are business: basically none of the customers want it any deeper, because, like I said, that depth rating can handle almost the entire ocean. So if this group's main driver is availability of technology and components to work from to build their AUV, they're probably willing to focus on just the 3000m-6000m range to take advantage of that. This isn't to say it's not worth it at all, and there are vehicles that can go deeper. But the question was asked, "Why are these guys limited to 6000m?" It's not technologically infeasible to go deeper, but practically speaking, they don't need to in order to get the information they need. Tradeoffs.

Jokes on Them

[lordfoul]

I put a ROBOTS.TXT down there last month.