AUV-2011-Underwater robotics experiment in the Mar Menor coastal lagoon

Abstract

As a result of the meeting held at SARTI in November 2010 (http://sites2.upc.edu/~www-sarti/web/cat/meeting/meeting.php) we are planning to conducta n AUVs experiment in order to determine the influence domain of the saltier plume of water going out the Mar Menor lagoon towards the Mediterranean Sea through The Estacio cannel. This goal, besides the relevance to understand the influence of the lagoon on the Mediterranean Sea, offers the challenge of cordinating, for first time, a fleet of AUVs from different research institutions of Spain and Portugal. Experiments like this will follow in the future. These engineering and process oriented challenges are aligned along two primary and two secondary goals: 1) Primary goals: a) Deployment of a heterogeneous mix of mobile assets to densely simple a confined meso-scale area (<50 Sq. Km). While no lower bound on this number is envisioned, we expect at least 3 vehicles in the water simultaneously; b) Obtaining, interpreting and validating science data obtained by in-situ assets including AUVs; 2) Secondary goals: a) Detection of prominent scientific features of intererest in-situ by AUVs and b) Detection of such features using ship/shore based human-in-the-loop. A visible side-effect of these primary goals would also ensure that the participating institutions are able to cohesively work together to plan, launch and deploy assets and in the process understand the scientific drivers of the proposed field experiment. The AUVs planned to be involved in the experiment are: GUANAY II (SARTI, UPC), Sparus (U. of Girona), ÆGIR (UPCT), SEACON and NAUV (LSTS, U. of Porto). An Slocum Glider (SOCIB) will also be involved.