​

In the Big Picture of the many ways that AUVs can advance ocean science, the idea of a solar AUV seems almost naively charming, because there’s a very narrow range of specifications where such architecture can actually work.

Happily, what it can do is well-matched with what must become the dominant AUV use-case: monitoring the health of MPA’s and EEZ’s. This perpetual AUV use-case will necessarily eclipse all others in unit volume and data gathering.

 

This Optonaut Development project will produce a small initial fleet of OptoNaut AUV's, with examples of both Day-Sailor and Expedition models. Launch is expected in Q4 2022. 

​

Optonautics will begin exercising the AUV's through chartered Mission-Driven Data Services. The Data Services will help to inform and to afford our ongoing evolutionary R&D, and to quantify the need for fleet expansion. 

​

Optonautics will build natural synergistic alliances with Academia through grants of AUV mission time, collaboration with Capstone projects, and eventual Internships for aspiring Scientists, Engineers and Pilots.

 

An abundance of research opportunities await the Optonaut fleet in just our own backyard of Monterey Bay and the Hawaiian Islands. As the Optonaut platform matures, larger batches of AUV's will be more cost-effectively produced, and larger swarming operations will be made affordably possible. 

​

The Optonaut platform could ultimately provide high-resolution acoustic, visual and other in-situ sensor data from coastal, littoral and pelagic areas throughout the lower latitudes. 

​

Optonautics will initially manage all logistical and operational tasks for small-scale operations, eventually coordinating with Agencies and Consortia on larger programs.

~~~~~~~

---Accessing The Big Picture---

​

To sample ocean data over great expanses and into the depths, the Ocean Sciences need  affordable new tools.

 

The modest Optonaut sensor platform will be calibrated to produce high-quality bathymetric and hydrographic data to align with global-scale efforts such as the GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project, NOAA's Oceans Unmanned, and the Global Climate Observing System/Global Ocean Observing System (GCOS /GOOS).

 

The Optonaut could become an invaluable platform for major ecological surveys, like NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP), managing the identification of sensitive coral reef ecosystems for conservation efforts, throughout the Pacific.

Australia's Tropical Water Quality Hub, having assumed management of a collaborative task that includes hydrographic monitoring of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), might make practical use of a large fleet of Optonauts. That enormous bellwether ecosystem has already suffered substantially from rising temperature, agricultural runoff, and acidity.

 

Only now are we developing the robotic technology to observe and understand the magnitude of the damage, the vulnerability and the resiliency of these ecosystems. The ocean data collection tools of today are vastly overwhelmed by the scope of the task. Many efforts are underway to build autonomous systems that can assist in this type of survey: cooperative in-situ sensor platforms have already begun to work together in small numbers. The Optonaut embodies a potential platform solution, a missing elemental tool, for observing these remote coral colonies, cost-effectively, over months at a time.

​

Other meso-scale Ocean Science operations such as the Cooperative Hypoxia Assessment and Monitoring Program (CHAMP) struggle to afford an annual survey of a condition that perennially decimates the benthos over thousands of square kilometers. Hypoxic zones are common around river mouths carrying agricultural runoff. In the Monterey Bay, the regional Oxygen Minimum Zone (OMZ) has been tracked over years and shown to be expanding, having a measurable detrimental effect on certain species. A need exists to better track this and related phenomena along coastal areas. The Optonaut platform could bring a wealth of data to better distinguish anthropogenic components of these issues. This basic data is fundamental to mitigating deleterious and costly phenomena. The data retrieved by our sensor platforms will help provide a factual foundation on which sound governmental policy can be based to protect the great oceanic ecosystem for the industries and the people who rely upon it.    

~~~~~~~

 

During development "Optonaut" AUV Specifications will remain in flux as subsystems are integrated, become operational, and can be field tested. Specialized sensor payload integration priorities will be driven by the interests of outspoken researchers, and constrained by resource availability.

 

Contact us.

​