Why Choose a SAUV?
- Traditional AUVs offer mission durations ranging from hours to days. They are largely limited by on-board battery power and hotel load.
- Gliders offer an alternative platform, with effectively infinite mission duration, but limited directivity. While buoyancy-driven motion offers long-duration missions, sensor duration is still limited to hotel power, and maneuverability is limited – the vehicle can get down, but it can’t stay down.
- Hybrid wave-propelled systems are attractive for long-term deployments, but these systems are limited to surface operation and may require significant wave action for propulsion. Solar panels and lithium ion batteries may provide additional power for payload operation, but this is typically limited.
- SAUV II - With its square meter of solar panels and 500-meter depth capability, the SAUV II provides the most flexible combination of power, endurance, and mission-configurability. It can collect from 300 to 900 Watt-hours per day and carries 2.4KWhr on-board batteries. At full charge, the system would provide approximately 1900 WHrs of energy available (assumes 20% reserve. A possible mission scenario might involve traveling 3 miles @ 2 knots, which would use 41 W. Assuming a hotel load of 10W, the resulting energy use would be 51W continuous over 1.5 hours, for a total consumption of 76.5 Whrs, leaving plenty of energy for both station keeping and data transmission once at the surface. If extended high-energy-use missions are required, multiple SAUV’s have been configured to operate in a role switching mode allowing multiple vehicles to communicate and carry out the mission based on the status reported by each SAUV.
- The SAUV II can dive under its own power to depths of up to 500 meters, then remain there and execute a mission, such as mapping, imaging or chemical sampling. The SAUV II can also remain on the surface, either station-keeping independent of sea-state conditions, or navigating to access objectives or avoid exposure. The SAUV II is self-propelled, controlled by a single vectored thruster and responsive to changing mission instructions, via an existing embedded Iridium satellite phone link and mission controller software.
Back to SAUV Product Page |
SAUV II
|
