An autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is a device that has a power source and fully automatically observes the sea along a predetermined route.Until now, it has demonstrated its capabilities in seafloor photography and acoustic surveys, and has brought new discoveries to seafloor surveys, but in deep seas where the communication environment is poor, it is not possible to collect (sample) seafloor organisms and minerals. Has been a long-standing issue.
This time, the research group led by the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering / Social Robot Realization Center of Kyushu Institute of Technology and the Underwater Observation and Mounting Engineering Research Center of the Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo has launched the AUV "TUNA-SAND2", which specializes in sampling. It was developed and succeeded in fully automatic biological sampling in the natural environment off Shimizu.
TUNA-SAND2 is a hovering type AUV with a total length of 1.4 m and a weight of 380 kg.It is equipped with a 3D mapping device that can map the seabed in three dimensions, and a camera for detecting organisms that live on the seabed. Since its completion in 3, it has been used for the Sea of Okhotsk Fisheries Resources Survey and the coral reef survey at the bottom of Okinawa, and has been successful in image mapping.
After that, TUNA-SAND2 has strengthened the sampling function.When information on the species to be captured is given, an image of the seafloor is taken with the on-board camera, and the image judged to be the organism to be sampled is transmitted to researchers on board by acoustic communication.If you specify the target image from the sent images, it will return to the shooting position and sample the target creature.By repeating this series of processes, fully automatic sampling was successful.
In resource surveys and scientific surveys, not only image and acoustic data but also actual samples are indispensable. By realizing fully automatic image shooting and fully automatic sampling by AUV, it is expected that it will be possible to investigate the resource reserve efficiently and with high accuracy in the future.
