Iain and Ayana from the ecoSUB team joined Matt Taylor and Oban Jones from the autonomous systems group at Plymouth Marine Laboratory to spend the day running some missions with one of their ecoSUBm5 AUVs.  The group at PML are preparing to do some seabed video surveys using their ecoSUB AUVs and were running some trial missions.  Iain and Ayana tagged along to share experience and provide support.

Iain and Alex were working from a beach in Southampton yesterday, running missions with the ecoSUBm5-Hydrocarbon Sniffer AUV, our low cost platform available with the Seabird Scientific SeaOWL sensor for oil in water detection and a Valeport CT sensor for conductivity and temperature.

The missions were run to allow colleagues from Oil Spill Response Limited (OSRL) and Blue Ocean Monitoring the chance to see the vehicle up close and appreciate the speed of data availability.  As part of the work, OSRL received full data sets immediately after each mission and integrated it into their mission control platform for data visualisation.  This process was tuned during the day and allowed full output within minutes of a mission finishing.

The ecoSUB AUV demonstrated its ease of use, ability to be operated with very little infrastructure and performed perfectly, completing all missions and providing useful data.  

Really great to see that staff at the Scottish Association of Marine Science (SAMS) in Oban have been putting their ecoSUBm5 AUV to excellent use.

​Students have been using the ecoSUBm5 as part of the Robotics module. Aim: setup, ballast, problem solve, setup mission, deploy, data download and process etc.! What a success.

One of the parameters we have been asked about most regularly is pH.  We are now delighted to announce that the ANB Sensors S-1000 pH sensor is available as a payload for the ecoSUBm5 AUV, it can be combined with a range of payloads including Conductivity, Temperature, Chlorophyll-a, Turbidity and Dissolved Oxygen to offer an excellent Science class set up for our users.

The S-1000 pH sensor is a high accuracy sensor with initial accuracy of +/- 0.05 pH and is calibration free.  It samples once every 23 seconds whilst on mission and can provide a useful tool in measuring ocean acidification.  Software integration and mechanical design are complete and we look forward to providing this to many ecoSUB users in the future.

Unfortunately we don't have any photos of this configuration yet, but below is a rendered image of an ecoSUBm5 with the flow tube and exhaust visible for the S-1000 pH sensor, along with a Sea-Bird Scientific three channel Chl/CDOM/BB sensor, Valeport CT sensor, Water Linked DVL and nano-modem.

Iain, Alex and Ayana finally got the chance to get out on the water this month, after what seems like a long time! We spent the day out on the Plymouth Quest helping James Fishwick and colleagues at PML capture some footage of their new ecoSUB AUVs for the Marine Tech Expo event.  If you missed the Marine Tech Expo, catch up with it here 

ecoSUB Robotics have launched their range of Science series, Scout series and Hydrocarbon Sniffer series vehicles.  Whilst users can configure any ecoSUB AUV with sensor payloads to meet their own needs, the addition of pre-configured vehicles covering a range of applications is intended to make procuring AUV technology as easy as possible.
 
Science series – focused on measuring physical and biogeochemical parameters for users in research, commercial and defense applications.  Science series vehicles are equipped to measure Conductivity, Temperature, Salinity, Speed of Sound, Chlorophyll-a, Turbidity, Dissolved Oxygen and pH.
 
Scout series – for survey applications the ecoSUBm can be deployed with Side Scan Sonar and DVL for high accuracy navigation, especially when used in conjunction with Network Localisation for navigating through the water column.
 
Hydrocarbon Sniffer series – focused on providing detection and measurement of crude oil in water, principally to provide the offshore oil and gas community with low-cost solutions for rapid and targeted data collection.  These vehicles are ideal for emergency response incidents where rapid environmental assessment and oil plume tracking is required.  Multiple ecoSUB-Hydrocarbon Sniffer AUVs can provide wide spatial resolution and timely data collection.
 
For more information, please contact us via [email protected] or find out more at www.ecoSUB.uk

ecoSUB Robotics are exhibiting at the virtual event, MATS 2020 (Marine Autonomy & Technology Showcase) this week (10-12 November).

Iain will be giving a talk on Thursday 12 November at 14:15 GMT during the themed session 'The System', chaired by Dan Hook.

To register please visit: https://noc-events.co.uk/mats-showcase-2020