Page 30: of Marine Technology Magazine (March 2021)

AUV Docking

ISE’s dock in their shop showing the LED con? guration

All images courtesy International Submarine Engineering wanted to accomplish this repeatedly over several days and

DOCKING gather data on the system performance. This feedback would “Range 3.5 meters. We’re on 380.” Back on Researcher, Ja- son breaks the building tension yet again with the next big not only help to inform the next stage design decisions but event. ‘380’ is the name for the section of the mission where would prove that the ? rst success wasn’t just luck. Over the the AUV attempts its ? nal closing stage. It has evaluated that next few days, the AUV successfully docked ? ve more times, the conditions are good and switched to the next stage. In this giving the team plenty of data to work with.

phase there are several safety features designed to minimise

THE NEXT STEPS risk of damage to the AUV and dock. If the vehicle has not re-

Now ISE has completed this stage of the project there are ceived a signal that it has latched within a certain time frame, if it travels over a certain distance, or loses tracking on the many options for continued development. Various lessons

LEDs, it will automatically switch to the abort phase of the were learned during these sea trials - as is always the case with mission so that it can back away and try again later. These prototypes. For example, the dock can be made smaller and abort conditions were considered at great length by the team simpler to launch and the tracking algorithms can be improved to make them more robust.

at ISE, as trying to hit something with the AUV is the opposite

For this project ISE focused solely on docking as this was of what they normally intend to do.

Everyone on the bridge is now anxiously waiting for the what they identi? ed as the gap in the market. This capability next update. They’ve double and triple-checked everything. has many bene? ts and possibilities as previously mentioned.

On previous days, the AUV had completed every part of the However, if the system were also able to recover the AUV that would open up even more possibilities, especially as mission except this ? nal one, will it succeed? The next update more offshore work moves to utilising robotic systems oper- arrives: “We have telemetry, and we’re docked!” It made it!

Although the sense of achievement was felt by the whole ated from shore.

Whatever the ? nal system looks like, its clear that there is a lot

ISE team, they weren’t content with docking just once. They of potential to improve our current subsea survey operations. 30 March/April 2021

MTR #3 (18-33).indd 30 3/22/2021 7:03:59 PM