| Abstract | Autonomous underwater vehicles, and in particular autonomous underwater gliders, represent a rapidly maturing technology with a large cost-saving potential over current ocean sampling technologies for sustained (month at a time) real-time measurements. In this paper we give an overview of the main building blocks of an underwater glider system for propulsion, control, communication and sensing. A typical glider operation, consisting of deployment, planning, monitoring and recovery will be described using the 2003 AOSN-II field experiment in Monterey Bay, California. We briefly describe recent developments at NRC-IOT, in particular the development of a laboratory-scale glider for dynamics and control research and the concept of a regional ocean observation system using underwater gliders. |
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