In the week 17 – 21 October AUV Ran will be doing field tests in the Baltic Sea, supported by R/V Skagerak. SCOOT invites small and medium sized companies, entrepreneurs and everyone with an interesting idea to join! SCOOT wants to hear from you, the offer is free of charge. This is a great opportunity to use a research vessel and an underwater robot, both top of the line with impressive sensor suits.
The field tests are planned mainly in the southern part of Baltic Proper, but also further north and possibly also along the Swedish west coast. (AUV Ran is preparing for the next field season in the Southern Ocean and project leader Anna Wåhlin wants to conduct sensor tests in suitable soft bottom locations, which can be found for example in the Bornholm Basin.)
"Our start-up has been a fantastic success, and now we want to grow. Through the support of SCOOT and the surveying done by AUV Ran we are well prepared for expanding our installations at sea. And it was great to work with Stephan Hagerling at Bottenlusen."
"The mapping done by AUV Ran was impressive: The details, the speed, the complete coverage of the area I wanted. I cannot see how I could have got this data in any other way. Through SCOOT I have also started an interesting collaboration with Ten Island Seafarm AB."
"The possibility of using AUV Ran for automated sampling of water in the monitoring of invasive species based on eDNA analysis is very important for us. It is a cost-effective way of covering a large area. Such an 'early warning' system is essential to mitigate invasive species."
Yesterday came the news that our partner MMT is being acquired by another major within ocean surveying: Ocean Initity, the pioneer in the use of simultaneously deploying fleets of marine robots. At SCOOT we are excited about the possibilities for synergies!
"I’m glad we have found new owner who want to develop MMT in the future and who also has a lot of interesting technology for us to explore.
This will not change our engagement in SCOOT or other arrangements we have, e.g. with the University."
P-O Sverlinger
CEO, MMT
Ocean Infinity today operates a large fleet of AUVs, similar to our flagrobot AUV Ran (owned by UGOT, mananged by MMT). Ocean Infinity’s Armada Fleet represents a coming leap in the use of surface-going ocean robots.
Do we need to say that there has been many comments and ‘Wow!’ on Twitter and LinkedIn and other fora… Here is the press release on the matter (pdf):
In 2019 SCOOT’s flagrobot AUV Ran became first to conquer the depths under the ‘doomsday’ Thwaites Glacier. In 2020 Ran’s greatest achievement was the mapping of subsea landslides in the 2000 metres deep Kaikōura Canyon off New Zeeland (read news at NIWA and see their nice Ran pop video below!).
Now Ran is back in Sweden, and as always SCOOT makes her available for entrepreneurs, innovators and SMEs. First out is a group of SMEs during an intense mission week in early February on the Swedish west coast.
Let us know if you want to join the collaboration/testing/operations, already in February and in the planned June session. We are not looking for AUV experts only. We are looking for anyone with ideas for utilising or collecting ocean data!
What a day… The conference Ocean Data for Ocean Health covered a lot of the themes SCOOT has been involved in the last two years. We hosted the event on September 29th at SCOOT’s space at Nya Varvet in Gothenburg, and we were happy to gather quite a number of old and new SCOOT people and partners.
The programme scratched on the surface of many urgent topics. SCOOT is committed to contribute to keeping up the momentum of this dynamic environment! (Just hosted breakfast meeting on sensors platforms of opportunity, see below.)
Especially intense for SCOOT was the final Block 4, demonstrating autonomous technology for collecting ocean data, see below.
Jessica just before start of conference.
Jessica kicks off conference.
From block 1, keynote by Robin teigland.
Christian and Fredrik leading block 2.
Keynote speaker Jannes Gimsbury, block 3.
Torsten talking to Robert Mertens, block 3.
Robots for ocean science, in the electronics workshop.
Olle shows and tells in the electronics workshop.
Olle explains how diving glider Seaexplorer works.
Preparations for demo in the marina.
Seacat in the marina.
Seacat approaching Green Pilot, Robert stands by.
Ola explains data collection with Green Pilot.
Previous
Next
Block 4: Demonstration of ocean robots
Autonomous vehicles
VOTO‘s research coordinator Louise Biddle and oceanographic technician Olle Petersson explain how gliders on and below the seasurface monitors the ocean.
Play Video
Next generation ocean observers!
Elsa and Jakob from the Science Club in Lysekil show their drifter Dynamene, built by Science Club and deployed in the morning, retrieving data live!
Play Video
Experimental platforms
Ola Benderius from Chalmers Revere lab and Robert Rylander from RISE Maritime research demontrate how knowledge from the automotive industry can be applied in the maritime domain. (Special appearance by flying drone from MMT Swden AB…)
Play Video
October 21st, breakfast webinar on tuna and fishing vessels
We were 6 persons having our morning coffee at Nya Varvet and another 6 joining the video meeting. Picking up from Sept 29th, we talked at some length about opportunities (and challenges) around data from tagged animals and from sensors mounted on fishing gear/vessels. Take home messages:
These data have huge potential to fill serious gaps in existing ocean monitoring programmes, where other and autonomous methods struggle. These gaps include shelf and coastal seas and marginal ice zones.
The cost-benefit relation is very good!
The infrastructure for collecting and distributing these data is rapidly expanding and maturing.
Challenges include subsurface communication and integration into existing monitoring data flows.
This is really AUV Ran doing her thing: Deep under, manoeuvring close to the bottom, using her vast sensor suit to scan the environment. This time it is for the benefit of researchers in New Zeeland, investigating the seabed of the 2000 metres deep Kaikōura Canyon. It was transformed by an earthquake in 2016; 850 million tonnes of sediment were displaced!
We expect Ran to be back in Sweden in January. Every once in a while she takes a rest behind SCOOT’s office/workshop at Nya Varvet in Gothenburg. Please contact us if you want use AUV Ran or if you just want to take look. We plan 10 operational SCOOT days for Ran in 2021.
SCOOT’s flagrobot AUV Ran is one busy two-tonne-piece of equipment. From the Southern Ocean to the Baltic Sea, and later this year off to New Zeeland. However, last month a window of availability opened… Startup company Marflow AB with founders Erik Nordborg and Glenn Hederot jumped on this opportunity.
Erik explains:
“Marflow aims to investigate and map ocean currents with very high accuracy. Precise measurements of the oceanic conditions in both time and space are valuable to us but indeed difficult to achieve in reality. AUV Ran will however allow us to do just that, studying ocean currents along with numerous other parameters with a spatial coverage that we have not been able to do before.”
“Marflow are very excited and happy for this opportunity to try AUV Ran and to discover what we can actually achieve with a tool like this. Before launching, Anna Wåhlin helped us setting up a course for Ran to follow. It was really impressive seeing AUV Ran navigating so accurately along this predefined route in relatively confined waters –all the time logging valuable data.”
Staff from MMT Sweden AB, attending to AUV Ran onboard (old) R/V Skagerak.
Evening work on AUV Ran, in between missions outside Härnösand, Sweden.
AUV Ran surfacing after mission, switching on light and releasing nose cone to facilitate recover. Outside Härnösand, Sweden.
A new player has joined the ocean science community in Sweden: VOTO – Voice Of The Ocean. SCOOT is of course delighted that VOTO is a strong believer in automated methods of observations. VOTO has already a fleet of six ocean robots: 4 diving SeaExplorers by Alsemar and 2 surface going Sailbuoys by Offshore Sensing. SCOOT’s director Seb Swart and his team joined VOTO’s SeaExplorer course, read their report!
We will definitely hear more about VOTO and their ocean robots and the data they gather…
Louise Biddle summarizes the Austral winter-spring season for this robotics heavy project:
The ROAM-MIZ (Robotic Observations And Modelling in the Marginal Ice Zone) project aims to capture high resolution observations of how the upper ocean near and under sea ice responds to sea ice growth or melt. The team, led by SCOOT’s director Sebastiaan Swart at the University of Gothenburg, deployed multiple platforms in, and at the edge of, the marginal ice zone in austral winter and spring 2019. Using the South African icebreaker, the SA Agulhas II, as a deployment platform, three profiling ocean gliders (Seagliders), a surface glider (Offshore Sensing Sailbuoy), multiple wave-recording surface floats (SWIFT buoys) and two ice-moored buoys were deployed between 56-60°S. Between the 10 platforms, over 370 days of data were collected from this remote and under-sampled region of the Southern Ocean, with the longest continuous time-series of over 130 days.
The challenges that the deployment team and platforms faced included rapid freezing up of sensors in temperatures that dropped to minus 20°C (before wind chill), rough seas and rapid movement of sea ice floes. With support from collaborators around the world including CSIR (South Africa), CalTech (USA) and University of East Anglia (UK), this project has demonstrated that autonomous instrumentation holds the capability to explore and monitor some of the most inaccessible oceans on Earth. Data is now being processed by the team based at the University of Gothenburg, with the “live data” viewable on roammiz.com and the first paper recently published in Geophysical Research Letters. Projects update can be followed on @PolarGliders .
Paper: Swart, S., du Plessis, M. D., Thompson, A. F., Biddle, L. C., Giddy, I., Linders, T., et al. ( 2020). Submesoscale fronts in the
Antarctic marginal ice zone and their response to wind forcing. Geophysical Research Letters, 47, e2019GL086649. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL086649
Do you want to learn and test what/where/how autonomous platforms can measure in the ocean. Do you already have experience and want to meet other experts? This is the workshop for you! More info about available resources and schedule here.
SCOOT’s fleet of autonomous vessels and robots will be available, together with support vessels, technicians and experts. Specifically this includes SCOOT’s flagrobot, the AUV Ran. SCOOT is proud of the coverage Ran’s achievements has got in media, e.g. in Roling Stone, Public Radio International and Swedish public service television.
Our host for this workshop is Institute of Marine Research, belonging to Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).
Please contact us if you interested in participating!
