Todays and Tomorrows Applications of long persistence unmanned platforms for monitoring and surveys

Edison Hudson

Todays topics:
Gliders and their recent feats Applications in the Offshore Energy Industry The value proposition of glider services

Gliders persist for weeks to months at sea unlike other AUVs

Seaglider in Gulf of Mexico

Slocum crosses the Atlantic

Wave Gliders cross the Pacific

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Gliders have global coverage using satellite links and the Internet

Buoyancy Gliders are highly programmable AUVs

Glider can operate from shallow water to depths, traveling using variable buoyancy, surfacing frequently to get GPS position and to communicate data
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The Wave Glider is an unmanned surface vehicle that can follow waypoints

Using surface wave energy for propulsion, Wave Gliders can endure for more than 1 year in a single mission In 2009, a pair of Liquid Robotics Wave Gliders traveled from Hawaii to San Diego, a distance of more than 2,500 miles, and have set out recently on a mission to cross the Pacific starting in San Francisco covering over 6000 km2
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www.liquidr.com

Slocums World Record AUV DistanceTrans-Atlantic Crossing

Over 7000 km covered in 7.3 months by Rutgers University modified Slocum RU27

Equivalent to 21,700-mpg!
http://www.webbresearch.com/slocumglider.aspx
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World Record AUV Endurance

SG144 Entire Ocean Station Papa Mission

SG144 Ocean Station Papa Mission* 6/14/2009 4/2/2010

Dives: 878 Duration at Sea: 9.6 months Vertical Distance through Water: 1734 km Horizontal Distance over Ground: 5076 km Horizontal Distance through Water: 6798m Velocities through Water: Max Horizontal: 39.9 cm/s Average Horizontal: 21.6 cm/s Max Vertical: 9.3 cm/s Average Vertical: 6.25 cm/s Total Battery Remaining after Mission: 13%

Seabird CTD, 2 x O2 (Aannderaa + Seabird), Wet Labs ECO Triplet 1 M resolution sampling over ascent / descent to 1000 m

Sensor Payload :

http://www.apl.washington.edu/projects/seaglider/summary.html

Gliders can now address the entire water column

In recent trials, the Deepglider version of Seaglider developed by Professor Charlie Eriksen and team at UW has achieved 6000 m dives off coast of Puerto Rico. This depth milestone means that gliders can now cover 99% of Earths Oceans

From tropical to polar - Gliders operate in a broad range of environments and weather

Dr Craig Lee of the Applied Physics Lab University of Washington has been operating Seagliders under arctic ice since 2004.
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Crude in water detection Gulf of Mexico Deep Water Horizon mission

Recovery July 30th

Launch May 21st

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Detection and mapping oil in water

21 May 2010 30 July 2010

Well capped here

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Many Glider Applications have been identified that support offshore energy

0M
Seismic support Metoc

1,000 M
Current mapping Data Truck

2,000 M
Bottom Seismic Leak / Seep detection

3,000 M 13

Emerging Energy industry applications for gliders

Deep Seismic - Dense, accurate, and continuous TS profiles support more accurate seismic modeling for deep subsea surveys Current Mapping -Full 3D current mapping surface to seabed in real-time to aid operational safety, leak plume and dispersant modeling, structural long term stress assessments, and other tasks Exploration / Seep-Leaks - Thermogenic hydrocarbon seep or leak detection and mapping for exploration Baseline Environment - Insitu chemistry sensors based on new lab on a chip technology coupled with physical sample capture provide background for environmental monitoring Acoustic Monitoring Enables mammal tracking and alerting, improves seismic analysis by providing acoustic baseline Advanced Seismic Bottom seismic from active projectors positioned on seabed, with mobile acoustic recording at depth Data truck - transfers data from fixed seafloor sensors to satellite or surface broadband infrastructure from acoustic or optical transceivers Under ice surveys Operating year around under ice to support chemical surveys for seeps, and seismic support
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Exploration using Thermogenic crude detection:

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Precision Temp Salinity profiles supports accurate 3D and 4 D surveys

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Nearly a decade of precision CTD data from Glider UUVs

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Greater sensor capacity is enabler of many new applications

Originally carrying only one or two sensors, modern commercial gliders can now support 5 to 7 concurrent sensor payloads

Gliders inherently provide Depth Averaged Currents for each dive

SG515 Deep Water Horizon Site - Glider tracks with depth average current vectors ( blue arrows)

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3D Mapping of currents from surface to seafloor

Low power, compact ACDP enable gliders to map for long periods

The four-beam transducer head geometry provides gimbaled profiling for glider descent and ascent. Three of the four transducers are used to make the measurements on descent and a different combination of three transducers are used on ascent. This produces 20 m bucket profiles continuously as the glider dives or ascends.

3D current map
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O&G value of currents Safety and:predictive maintenance - Refining the current

models used to predict the life / limits of structural elements such as platform risers, cabling and pipelines as predicted from cumulative or event ( hurricanes for instance) effects of actual currents at different depths. This can save unnecessary costs in structural replacements, but more importantly enhances safety. enables go / no-go decisions during construction or intervention operations with ROVs and large structural deployments on any given day. As the depth of the operations increase, the complexities of tether management ( to ROVs) and hoisting systems used to raise and lower infrastructure are assured by having real-time current maps.

Operational management real-time, 3 D current knowledge

Dispersion models If a spill even occurs, having real-time

current data enables the best response in terms of skimmer asset deployment, dispersant location for best effects, and early warning of coastal authorities. Accurate current data can mitigate damage from spill events by making their models more accurate and timely.
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Cooperative Ocean Gliders

Unmanned surface gliders combined with deep diving gliders can produce accurate, real-time currents using ADCP to produce a surface to seafloor current map, that can be relayed to operators. Integration of COTS USBL / acoustic modems on both surface and underwater platforms effectively creates a mobile underwater GPS solution, simplifying 3D current mapping algorithm and geo-locating sensor readings. The use of tracking of surface vehicle to UUV would also enable effective acoustic or optical modem based data trucks to exfiltrate data from bottom production infrastructure. Surface glider can provide data reach back, eliminating need of deep glider to surface, increasing underwater endurance by reducing surfacing .

GPS and Satellite comms

Tracking & acomms

Hydrocarbon detection

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Rendezvous and Relay Efficient data transfer

Avg bit joules/b Vs rate/sec Joules it Iridium Acomms 256 34200 133.6 707% Iridium 2000 37800 18.9 100% 802.11B 11000 18000 1.6 9% 802.11G 37000 21600 0.6 3%

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Compared to ship based methods gliders are very economic

Offshore Oil-Gas ships cost between $40,000 to $100,000 per day, and ROVs add 5000 to 10,000 per day. Turnkey, remotely operated gliders cost a few thousand per day to operate and they work 7/24

The future of flying nodes for 4D seismic

Current manually placed seismic bottom nodes take 30-45 days to lay at $50,000 per day or more. Flying glider based nodes might deploy in a few days at a cost of less than 2K per node to deploy and retrieve.

Summary
Both surface and underwater gliders have

proven to be reliable, long endurance platforms capable of many missions. The increasing range of onboard sensors , programmability, and communication links is enabling gliders to collect a broad range of data in near real-time. The cost of glider based solutions is typically 1/10 to 1/20th of the cost of conventional offshore methods of data gathering or parameter mapping. While still at the stage of early adoption, the use of gliders in the offshore energy industry seems highly likely.

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THANKS!
For more information:
Edison Hudson edisonhudson@gmail.com 919-215-9358

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Optical Broadband for dense data tranfers

Optical data transfer is feasible in the low turbidity deep ocean Blue-Green ( 532 nm) laser and LED based transceiver systems have been developed Can typically operate up to 100 m distance, longer distances in clear water below 500 m Bandwidths of 10-20 megabits / second have been achieved in low turbidity water Range and data rate projected to improve 2 to 3 fold over next 5 years with better diode lasers and APD

Gliders could transfer 1 gigabyte in less than 15 minutes with light modem link

Operation Bluepoint Gulf of Mexico

May 21st 2010 - iRobot team launched Operation Bluepoint putting one of our own Seaglider AUVs (SG-515), into the Gulf west of DWH site Science support for the iRobot mission has been provided by Dr. Vernon Asper, University of Southern Mississippi, Dr. Craig Lee, University of Washington - APL 2 USN owned NAVO Seagliders joined iRobots SG-515 later in the same area west and southwest of Macondo DWH site

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Crude Oil Detection with Wet Labs ECO Triple Fluorometer puck for Seaglider
Within the suspected contaminated zone, crude oil presence can be determined using this sensor by:*
An increase in the CDOM fluorescence channel above background values. An increase in backscattering or turbidity above background A decrease in the Chlorophyll to backscattering or turbidity ratio A decrease in the chlorophyll to backscattering ratio in the absence or only a weak CDOM response is indicative of a detached benthic nepheloid layer.

Integrated Wet Labs Triplet puck

*Based on original research as documented in Real time Geo-Referenced Detection of Dispersed Oil Plumes Christopher B. Fuller1, James S. Bonner1, Frank Kelly1, Cheryl A. Page2, Temitope Ojo3 1Conrad Blucher Institute for Surveying and Science, Corpus Christi, TX, USA, 2 Texas Engineering Experiment Station, College Station, TX, USA, 3Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA 30

Sticky but fully operational after 70+ days

Tail of SG515 on recovery

Fluorometer triplet puck on SG515 on recovery

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Oil Majors are concerned about new regulations on platform impact to mammals
iRobot and Duke University Marine Lab are integrating mammal tracking on Seagliders

Humpback (very close) birds Sea lions?

Blue whale

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Operation Bluepoint Mission Summary:

Macondo site 300+ dives to 1,000 m, each about 5 hrs duration Over 1500 km distance covered as of July 26th Sensors onboard measuring :
CDOM based crude detection Chlorophyll Flouresence Backscatter ( turbidity) O2 saturation Salinity Temperature Depth

Operating 3 km to 50 km West of

Surfacings of SG-515 in Gulf of Mexico since 5/21/10

sensors sampling every 5 secs / about every 0.5 m vertical over depth

Very high resolution survey with all

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Simultaneous map of O2 saturation values

O2 Saturation is believed to correlate to microbiologic activity, digesting oil products. Potential dead zone identification is mapped using this data from Seaglider

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