The aim is to develop and demonstrate an innovative type of fully automated ocean-air coordinated robotic operation that has the potential for drastically reducing the cost of ocean observing systems. The partners will develop a swarm of low cost micro underwater gliders (MUGs) that can operate autonomously with the support of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned surface vessels (USVs) for deployment, recovery, battery charging, and communication relay. The system will have the potential to reduce human intervention to the minimum, revolutionizing the affordability of a broad range of surveillance and data collection operations. Two different mission scenarios are proposed: In the first, base stations are located onshore, or on existing offshore platforms. This scenario suits coastal monitoring, and continuous environmental monitoring around oil and gas offshore platforms. In the second scenario, a long endurance wave powered USVs serves as base station for UAV and a swarm of MUGs. The proposed observing systems will be demonstrated during sea trials.
OASYS is funded by the MarTERA partners Research Council of Norway (RCN) and German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) and co-funded by the European Union.
Coordinator
Dr Alex Alcocer, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway
Consortium
Oslo Metropolitan University, University, Norway
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, University, Norway
Norwegian Polar Institute, Research institute, Norway
TriOS Mess- und Datentechnik GmbH, SME, Germany