Northeastern Section (39th Annual) and Southeastern Section (53rd Annual) Joint Meeting (March 25–27, 2004)

Paper No. 5
Presentation Time: 2:20 PM

THE SEABED AUV, A PLATFORM FOR HIGH RESOLUTION COASTAL IMAGING


SINGH, Hanumant, CAN, Ali, EUSTICE, Ryan, PIZARRO, Oscar and ROMAN, Christopher, Dept of Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Blake 206, MS#7, WHOI, Woods Hole, MA 02543, hanu@whoi.edu

The Seabed Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) is a hover-capable vehicle that has been designed to perform high resolution optical and acoustic sensing surveys. Its sensor suite includes a 12bit 1280x1024 monochrome or color CCD camera, a MST 300 kHz sidescan sonar, a 675kHz pencil-beam bathymetric sonar, a Seabird conductivity and temperature sensor, RDI ADCP and an Acoustic Modem.

Seabed has been designed for operations from small vessels with minimal support equipment. It has an operational depth of 2000 meters and at 1 m/s can run for up to 10 hours and survey 36 km per mission.

In this talk we will highlight the vehicle's capabilities with data obtained in separate cruises for microhabitat characterization off Stellwagen Bank in the Northeastern US and in coral surveys off of Puerto Rico and the USVI.