What can uncrewed surface vehicles teach us?
Uncrewed surface vehicles are being used to track and monitor our oceans, coastlines, and weather patterns, but what does this data reveal?
Uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) operate on the water’s surface, and as the term also suggests, they don't require humans to be aboard. USVs such as saildrones (produced by Saildrone Inc.) can be used for oceanic research, data gathering and environmental monitoring. Like a sailboat, saildrones catch the wind, but these orange vehicles are also solar powered. Equipped with sensors, cameras and scientific equipment, they can endure missions for extended periods of time, as demonstrated by the Saildrone SD 1021; dubbed the fastest unmanned vehicle to cross the Atlantic and the first to cross it in both directions.
Advantages of USVs for research
Whether crossing oceans or in a fixed position, USVs provide high-resolution, continuous data. Ifor Bielecki, COO of SeaBot XR, explains that their “persistence allows data collection over a period of time, rather than taking snap shots. In a way, it is the difference between a photograph and a film. Both are useful, but one allows more of the story to be told.” USVs are also cheaper than research vessels that can be operationally expensive, expanding mission possibilities.
Another upside with USVs is their ability to access remote, inhospitable locations that cannot be reached by humans. US scientists used Saildrone’s USVs in the central and eastern Tropical Ocean to investigate atmospheric cold pools - domes of cold and dry air that spread out below precipitating storms and published this paper analysing how cold pools influence changes in air temperature and wind speed. Upbeat on the USVs adaptive capabilities, lead academic Dr Samantha Wills of the University of Washington envisions “a fleet of remotely-piloted drones acting as a mobile mesoscale network that can monitor a range of air-sea phenomena throughout different ocean regions”.
(Credit: Saildrone Inc.)
Resilience in harsh, dangerous places
The Southern Ocean is another challenging sea to survey due to its vast size, remoteness, and harsh environment. A multinational research group has completed the first autonomous circumnavigation of Antarctica using USVs to record CO2 exchange between the atmosphere and ocean every hour. The 2021 publication concludes that more USVs will be needed to better understand the physical processes of the Southern Ocean.
In addition to coping with Antarctic ice, USVs can face up to storms too, as demonstrated by five saildrones collecting data in the Atlantic Ocean during the 2021 hurricane season. Saildrone Explorer SD 1045 spent a day within a hurricane, recording 90 mile per hour winds (145km), and wave heights over 50 feet (15m). Waves play a critical role in the health of the world ocean ecosystem and this data gathered is helping scientists understand ocean-atmosphere energy interactions, as witnessed in a dramatic video captured by the drone.
(Credit: Saildrone Inc.)
USV advancements and applications
USVs also open up new possibilities for other watercraft, to revolutionise our understanding of the ocean, as Leigh Storey, Associate Director of the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) explains: “USVs can recharge their batteries through solar/wind/wave and can potentially become docking stations for underwater vehicles so that they can recharge,” introducing new means of exploring the air-sea interface and the water column.
Bielecki also reminds us that “we must also not forget about sub-surface robotics and the astonishing discoveries that have come from underwater vehicles in recent times, such as those performed by the NOC’s Autosub Long Range vehicles,” that gather climate science data under polar ice.
While these are exciting times for USV developments, all ocean research deployment must meet stringent technical demands with strict requirement for sensor accuracy and trajectory tracking if the findings are to be trusted and comparable with data from the floating laboratories of research vessels.
Other opportunities
Beyond research, USVs are being deployed for many other purposes, including transport, trade and surveillance. Take for example, how built-in sonar are counting fish stocks to prevent overfishing. And how cameras aboard USVs are alerting authorities to unusual activity at ports and on the open sea, again, with additional help from aerial vehicles. The combined pairing of USVs and underwater vessels can also be very effective for infrastructure maintenance and inspections.
The autonomy of these technologies does not completely remove humans from the picture. People are needed to program and develop the technology, creating more future job vacancies within this growth industry that offers more consistent data than ever before, with access to new locations, boosting efficiency and cutting costs. And with a reduced footprint, USVs will help us see how our planet is changing under climate change, like never before.
Enjoyed reading about USVs? You might want to read Clarissa’s Rise of the underwater robots published in November 2021’s On the Radar.
Clarissa Wright is a freelance journalist.