The ecoSUB team are delighted to welcome Tom Rooney.  

Tom is a co-founder of Bristol Maritime Robotics and is also a visiting fellow at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory.  In addition to Tom's research work at Bristol Robotics Lab and BMR, he has teamed up with us a few days a week to share his expertise and to collaborate on some exciting technology development. 

Tom's experience is extensive; he has a PhD from Bristol Robotics Laboratory where is is currently a visiting fellow, has worked across a wide range of maritime robotics projects and his research areas are in challenging environment robotics.

Davide Fenucci of the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), along with co-authors, Jeremy Sitbon (ecoSUB), Jeff Neasham (University of Newcastle), Alex Phillips (NOC) and Andrea Munafo (NOC) have had their paper, Ad hoc Acoustic Network Aided Localization for micro-AUVs, published in the Field Robotics journal.

This paper focuses on the development of the ecoSUB Network Localisation solution which extends navigation capability for ecoSUB AUVs when operating within a network.  Network Localisation was developed as an outcome from the Innovate UK funded LCAT project, a collaboration between ecoSUB Robotics (a division of Planet Ocean Limited), National Oceanography Centre and University of Newcastle.

Fieldwork was completed with a fleet of earlier prototype ecoSUB AUVs, so specification and capability has changed somewhat, but this paper provides an excellent overview of the work completed and advances made during this project.

Download a copy of this paper here.

Jeremy joined the ecoSUB team right back in 2015 as our first Software Engineer, he has been involved in every step of our journey in the development and optimisation of ecoSUB AUVs, and a fab person to work with.  After 7 years, Jeremy leaves his role as Chief Robotics Engineer this month to pursue a new challenge in the underwater glider world.

We wish Jeremy the very best for the future and will of course be staying in touch.

Change of course brings new opportunities and we are well underway in the development of both the R&D and Production teams that Jeremy proudly led.

The ecoSUB team have been out running the new Power+ module through trials in April.  Power+ is a 27cm extension to the m5 or m25 housing which doubles the normal battery capacity of an m-series ecoSUB AUV, increasing endurance and facilitating higher power payloads. 

​Trials were focused on vehicle attitude and controller tuning, however, two of these vehicles went out with 1800kHz and 1200kHz side scan sonar systems where they were able to collect some awesome images from the Royal Navy's Defence Diving Centre in Portsmouth, UK.

The Power+ module is compatible with all production ecoSUBm5 and m25 AUVs and is depth rated to 2,500m.  The module also provides additional space for dry electronics.

The development of Power+ is part of the SoAR (Squads of Adaptive Robots) project part funded by Innovate UK - this project will continue to yield exciting and innovative advances to ecoSUB AUV technology.