About Slocum Autonomous Underwater Gliders

The Slocum Autonomous Underwater Gliding Vehicle (AUGV), built by Webb Research Corporation (Falmouth, MA), is an integrated instrument platform designed to operate in the coastal oceans. It is designed such that, by adjusting its volume to weight ratio, it dives and climbs in a sawtooth pattern to predetermined set of waypoints. The result is a low cost, highly adaptable autonomous underwater vehicle with a very low power requirement. The user programs the glider via text based mission files, which instruct the glider to dive and climb to a predetermined set of waypoints (latitudes and longitudes). Gliders are capable of communicating with a shore based computer or human user via high frequency radio transmission as well as by satellite. The estimated range of operation is 1500km.

While the majority of the glider is reserved for glider mechanics, battery storage and communication equipment, a section is devoted specifically to scientific payload. Future plans include outfitting the vehicles with a suite of miniaturized physical and bio-optical instrumentation that measure water properties including temperature and salinity, as well as the absorption and scattering of light in the water column. These instruments, combined with the mobility and long-range communication capabilities of the glider, will provide continuous, near real time information on ocean physics and biology. This information will help to improve the accuracy of oceanic forecasts and ground truthing of ocean color satellite algorithms.

The COOL group is currently focusing on the development and deployment of a fleet of gliders to continuously patrol the coastal oceans. In order to achieve this goal, we are employing some of the same “smart” technologies that NASA has used in deploying earth-orbiting satellite constellations. This technology allows the gliders to adjust their current course based on the previously collected physical and optical data. When realized, this will allow for 24-hour-a-day data collection without constant supervision by a human scientist. The end result will be a glider fleet that will be able to detect and track oceanic features (i.e.: upwelling events, red-tides, and coastal eddies) from their formation to dissipation, improving our current understanding of the dynamical nature of coastal ecosystems and providing earlier detection of oceanic features that develop offshore and are advected into coastal waters.