Unmanned technology unveils the mystery of Antarctica : USV fills data gap for polar expedition

China is building its fifth research station in Antarctica as it looks to expand research on the Earth’s southernmost continent and gain greater global influence on how it is governed.

From Hydro by Chris Yan, OceanAlpha

Not long ago, China’s fifth Antarctic scientific research station – the Ross Sea Station – officially laid its foundation stone on Inexpressible Island (74°54’S 163°39’E).
While preparation and research already began a few years ago, the construction work will take another four years to fully complete.
In November 2017, four unmanned surface vessels (USVs) from Oceanalpha Co., Ltd teamed up with the Antarctica expedition ship ‘Snow Dragon’ all the way south to the Ross Sea to assist the construction project.
The USVs worked for nearly 40 hours, completing a multibeam full-cover seabed topographic survey of five square kilometres.
This not only fills the data gap in the region but also provides spatial geographic data support for marine navigation and the construction of the new station.

Chinese icebreaker Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, seen returning from a three-month expedition in Antarctica.

Photo: Xinhua

This is China’s 34th Antarctic expedition and is aimed at building the nation’s fifth Antarctic station, following on from the Great Wall Station, Zhongshan Station, Kunlun Station and Taishan Station.

The expedition team consists of 334 members from more than 80 companies and organisations.
During the expedition, the team made full use of the ship-based, ice-based and sea-based platforms to conduct joint observations on land, ocean, atmosphere, ice shelf and organisms.
Their investigations will also help to establish the national Antarctic Observation Network, protect the marine environment and control pollution around the station.

 China's Antarctica stations

Oceanalpha’s USVs visit Antarctica for the first time

Changxin Liang, an engineer from Oceanalpha, was selected by the national expedition team last July.
He boarded the mother ship, Snow Dragon, with two M80 USVs and two SE40 USVs to carry out the autonomous hydrographic survey mission.

In the past, hydrographic surveys relied mainly on manned vessels which would alert surveyors on board to safety hazards but could only explore within channels.
The application of unmanned vessels greatly enlarges the survey area and reduces labour costs and fuel costs since they run on electricity or diesel.

The specific tasks of the USVs in this expedition include bathymetric survey, seabed topography survey, water flow and tide survey.
Detecting the direction of water flow will provide a reference to the design of the water circulation system in the station; observing tides and finding the highest point of sea level will determine the altitude position of the station so as to avoid it being inundated by seawater.

M80 was launched into the sea by the crane.

It’s all about time, time and time

The application of USVs is highly subject to weather conditions.
When the weather is poor, the team can only find two hours of undisrupted time to get the USV working.
“The weather in Antarctica is unpredictable.
When we were hanging down the USV, everything was fine, the weather was peaceful, but as soon as the USV touched the sea surface, snow suddenly started falling and the temperature dropped instantly.
It’s like the weather was challenging our resolution to continue, but we never gave up,” comments Liang.

With the mother ship supporting more than 200 missions, it is never easy to find an overlapping interval.
Liang continues: “We had to race against the weather, as well as coordinate with other 200 project teams that were waiting in line to get their missions done with the mother ship within strictly limited time.”

Every project has a tight restriction on members and equipment.
Each team can only be equipped with two to three staff members.
Equipment should be highly integrated; on-site assembly which would take too much time and energy is unacceptable.

In an interview, Dr JinJing Pu, the marine application technology director of Oceanalpha as well as the leading R&D engineer of the M80 USV, claimed: “When developing the Antarctica expedition USV, the M80, we bear in mind all the limitations but never compromise in its multi-functionality and humanisation”.

 M80 during testing at the Chinese Polar Expedition Base

Dr Pu was originally a teacher at Qingdao Ocean University and once spent more than 800 days at sea for research.
In 2016 he decided to leave the university and join Oceanalpha in order to participate in the development of marine USVs which in the future can help peers and juniors to conduct ocean expeditions that involve higher work intensity and bigger risks.

According to Dr Pu, M80 is modular-designed so it can be assembled conveniently and gives large capacity to survey instruments.
With the crane and hooking devices, the USV can be launched and retrieved easily.
Its autonomous system requires only two to three operators to conduct multiple surveys at a time.

During the whole expedition, the team worked for five days while the Snow Dragon was unloading materials in the new station.
It then had to stop for ten days because the Snow Dragon was leaving for Zhongshan Station for other projects.
The expedition could then continue for another three days when the Snow Dragon went back to the Ross Sea.
In the first five days, the team surveyed 3.6 square kilometres of sea area, and a total of nearly five square kilometres over two periods.

 M80 working near Inexpressible Island

 Inexpressive island with the GeoGarage platform (NGA nautical raster chart)

Surveying in Antarctica: Why can USVs shoulder such a task?

Strong winds and water flows in Antarctica could bring a lot of ice floes which might bump a survey vessel off its planned path or even cause a crash.
According to Dr Pu, drawing a precise survey line on water is an unparalleled advantage of a USV, which means it can sail in high accordance with the planned route enabling the mounted sensors to scan the seabed evenly, forming an accurate seabed topographic map.
Although the M80 was constantly hit by randomly drifting ice, its working pattern never got affected.

Dr Pu revealed the secret that qualified the M80 USV for the polar expedition: “The adoption of artificial intelligence and advanced algorithms ensures the accuracy of the USV’s sailing route.
When combining the autonomous obstacle avoidance system with the manual remote control mode, most emergencies can be resolved.
The uniquely designed bulbous nose can also cushion the impact of waves and ice floes.
The second generation of M80 USV has improved in material from composite to aluminium.
Aluminium alloy is more flexible so when a crash happens the USV will be deformed at most; its hull won’t stop functioning.
If the damage is serious, it can easily be repaired by cutting and welding.
Due to the low temperature, the lifetime of electric vessels is shortened sharply in Antarctica, making them unqualified for Antarctica expeditions.
The M80 is powered by diesel which only freezes at -35° C.”

Links :

• Hydro : USVs Conduct Underwater Topographic Survey in the Antarctic
• SCMP :  Robot boats propel one of China’s hottest start-ups as nation extends its reach across oceans
• Fundamental Philosophy of China's Antarctic Activities 
• GeoGarage blog : A maritime revolution is coming, and no one's in the wheelhouse

Robots ahoy! Mapping Earth's surface

Introducing SEA-KIT™ the world's first truly Long-range, Long Endurance, Ocean Capable Autonomous Surface Vessel. 

SEA-KIT and its submersible work in tandem to map the sea floor

From BBC by Johnathan Amos

One of the big favourites to win the ocean-mapping XPRIZE has formally confirmed its presence in the final.

The GEBCO-Nippon Foundation Alumni Team has just completed 24-hour trials of its technology and is ready for the competition's ultimate challenge.

This requires a mapping system inside a day to survey a section of seabed that is 500-sq-km in area and 4,000m-deep.

GEBCO-NF will use a state-of-the-art underwater vehicle launched from the back of a robotic boat.

The uncrewed surface vessel, known as SEA-KIT, will be of particular interest to British readers.
It has been designed by Hushcraft of Essex, which believes its 12m-long XPRIZE concept is the forerunner for a new class of autonomous, ocean-going boats.

The location of the final, due to take place in the next three months, is currently being kept a secret, but GEBCO-NF team lead Yulia Zarayskaya says her group will be well prepared wherever it is sent.
"We're pretty much there," she told BBC News.
"We still have some things to work out in terms of how best to operate our system in 24 hours and to manage the data and data processing.
Obviously, we've had some ups and down, but at this stage I'd say we know now how to bring it all together."

Ocean Discovery XPRIZE rules for final

Image copyright Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Image caption Most of what we know is the result of low-resolution satellite mapping

•     Map an area of 500 sq km at 4,000m depth
•     Time limit of 24hrs from entering map zone
•     Teams must map at least 50% of this area
•     Resolution: 5.0m horizontal, 0.5m vertical
•     Image 10 features, eg archaeological/geological
•     Top prize of $5m; $1m for second place

Today's maps of the ocean floor are woeful.
Less than 15% of its bathymetry (depth) has been measured in a meaningfully accurate way.
Most of what we know about the shape of the global seabed comes from gravity observations made by satellite and this method cannot see anything smaller than a kilometre in size.

The $7m Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE was launched to find new technologies and new strategies to try to close the knowledge gap.

Eight teams from around the world are expected to take on the year's-end challenge.
They will be using all manner of robotic systems that operate above, on and below the water's surface.

Image copyright GEBCO-NF/HUSHCRAFT

Image caption The SEA-KIT boat lines up ready to retrieve the Kongsberg Hugin AUV

GEBCO-NF is a natural candidate.
GEBCO stands for General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans - it is the official keeper, if you like, for maps of the sea-floor.
And many of its XPRIZE team-members have gone through the organisation's postgraduate training course at the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at the University of New Hampshire, US.

In the group's solution, a top-of-the-range autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) from the Norwegian Kongsberg Maritime company will make the sea-floor map using an echosounder.
The submersible will be deployed and recovered by SEA-KIT.

The rules of the competition demand that team-members cannot themselves be in the survey zone at the time and so that means the surface vessel also requires very efficient remote control and/or autonomy to get itself into the right place to release the Kongsberg sub - and get it back again after the mapping exercise.

Key to this, says Hushcraft's Ben Simpson, is a communications and control system called Global Situational Awareness via Internet, or G-SAVI.

"We are now not only able to view CCTV, thermal imaging and radar, but remotely control these from anywhere in the world," he explained.
"Other features include listening live to things going on onboard and repeat VHF to speak to other vessels in the vicinity of SEA-KIT - all from a remote office anywhere you have internet.
"It's a great step towards safely operating a vessel over the horizon anywhere in the world."

SEA-KIT Uncrewed Surface Vessel (USV)

Image copyright SEA-KIT INTERNATIONAL/Hushcraft

Future concepts: Many different applications are being considered for the boat

•     Dimensions: 11.75m long and 2.2m wide
•     Propulsion: Hybrid diesel-electric system
•     Range & speed: Up to 22,000km at 4 knots
•     Can fit inside a shipping container
•     But scalable. Larger versions being considered

The 12-tonne, aluminium-hulled SEA-KIT uses a conveyor belt mechanism in its aft section to launch the AUV.
An acoustic connection ensures the pair always know each other's position.
When the time comes for recovery, SEA-KIT manoeuvres itself in front of the sub, which then drives on to the rising ramp.

Hushcraft envisions multiple roles for the uncrewed boat.
Its remote-controlled and autonomous capabilities mean it could be sent into dangerous situations, for example to spread dispersants on an oil spill or to take scientific measurements in front of an ice shelf.

The present design can carry a payload of up 2.5 tonnes.
"The key driver for me is it's universal platform," said Mr Simpson.
"You don't have to keep tweaking the design. SEA-KIT is agnostic with regards to the equipment you want to put on it. It's got lots of bolting on points."

The ocean community - scientific and industrial - has set itself a target to map the entire ocean floor to a reasonable standard by 2030.
That will require higher investment, but likely also a few of the new approaches to be demonstrated in the XPRIZE final, says GEBCO-NF project coordinator Rochelle Wigley.

"It can be done; it's possible, although it might cost the same as a Mars mission," she told BBC News.
"That funding is not immediately available. Ocean science hasn't been seen as sexy.
That's changing and I think projects like XRPIZE and 2030 are raising awareness, and that's got to be good."

The XPRIZE Foundation will announce the location of the mapping zone in the next few weeks.

Image copyright Kongsberg Maritime

Image caption Using large, crewed vessels is expensive.

Employing remotely operated or autonomous boats instead could significantly lower costs 

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Nippon Foundation wants to map entire Ocean Floor .../ Mappers look to chart world's ocean floor by 2030/ The quest to map the mysteries of the ocean floor / Here are the teams competing to map the ocean for ... / Ocean floor to be mapped by 2030 ? / Why the first complete map of the ocean floor is ... / X Prize to map 4,000m-deep ocean floor with robots / It's time to geek out over a new global bathymetric ... / Inaccurate surveys of ocean depths a threat to mega ...

Merchant Adventurers: the voyage that launched modern England

In the spring of 1553 three ships sailed north-east from London into uncharted waters.

The scale of their ambition was breathtaking.

Drawing on the latest navigational science and the new spirit of enterprise and discovery sweeping the Tudor capital, they sought a northern passage to Asia and its riches.

The success of the expedition depended on its two leaders: Sir Hugh Willoughby, a brave gentleman soldier, and Richard Chancellor, a brilliant young scientist and practical man of the sea.

When their ships became separated in a storm, each had to fend for himself.

Their fates were sharply divided.

One returned to England, to recount extraordinary tales of the imperial court of Tsar Ivan the Terrible.

The tragic, mysterious story of the other two ships has to be pieced together through the surviving captain's log book, after he and his crew became lost and trapped by the advancing Arctic winter.

This long neglected endeavour was one of the boldest in British history, and its impact was profound. Although the 'merchant adventurers' failed to reach China as they had hoped, their achievements would lay the foundations for England's expansion on a global stage.

As James Evans' vivid account shows, their voyage also makes for a gripping story of daring, discovery, tragedy and adventure.

-From the dust jacket

From HistoryExtra

The 1553 expedition, undertaken in an attempt to find a new, shorter route to China and its riches, saw Sir Hugh Willoughby and his crew skirt through the icy seas around the top of Norway and along Asia’s northern rim.

The pioneering voyage ultimately led to the discovery of the White Sea and a new trade route to Russia, and helped to build cultural and diplomatic relations between England and the court of Ivan the Terrible in Russia.

In Merchant Adventurers: The Voyage That Launched Modern England, Evans explores the first major advances in maritime navigation, and the Tudor masters of cartography.
Here, writing for History Extra, he reveals eight things a Tudor crew would have needed to do if they hoped to survive the journey…

1) Know the wind

Mid-Tudor ships were evolving, and becoming better suited to long distance navigation.
But unlike modern sailing ships, most had square sails.
While these had advantages, sailing into the wind was not one of them.
Tacking was laborious, and there was much less flexibility in the direction travelled.

Often ships were stuck at port, ‘tarrying for the wind’, or they switched destination.
For the men of 1553 it was a huge frustration: they knew the window of the Arctic summer was narrow, and they desperately wanted to head north.
But for weeks they were pinned to the east coast of England, fretting over ‘great loss and consuming of time’.

When crossing large oceans such as the Atlantic, winds were governed by seasonal patterns, and familiarity with these helped sailors enormously because routes could be designed accordingly.

2) Don’t fall ill or get injured

Illness was little understood in Tudor England, and medical help could be as dangerous as the condition that necessitated it.

A ‘surgeon’ formed part of the crew only on a large ship.
He wasn’t bad at removing foreign objects, like splinters.
He could stitch open wounds, or ‘debride’ (remove dead tissue).
And he could amputate using a tourniquet to reduce blood loss (without anaesthetic).

Some suspected that cleanliness aided recovery – through observation rather than understanding of infection.
Nevertheless, painless surgery this was not.

Faced with other illnesses, surgeons were helpless.
Infectious diseases could play havoc with a crew, and there was little option other than to deposit affected men on shore and hope the malady did not spread.

3) Eat your greens

Diet in Tudor England was terrible for plenty of people, but life on board was worse.
Much food was simply unpleasant.
Supplies included staples like butter, cheese, beans, oatmeal and biscuit, or barrelled beef (“of a most loathsome and filthy taste and savour”, according to one sailor).

There was a reason crews chased wildlife when they could: people were less fastidious than we are today about which animals to eat.
So, in 1553 it was seabirds – puffins, or cormorants – that were stuffed hungrily into the hold.
But it could be anything: seals, whales, turtles, or even penguins.

Few expected what we today call a ‘balanced diet’.
Months at sea meant deficiencies, and scurvy was a notorious problem.
Lack of vitamin C caused lethargy, joint pain and gum disease, then fever, convulsions and death.
It was vital to eat fruit and vegetables when possible, as a few unusually caring captains – like James Lancaster on the first East India voyage – gleaned from intelligent guesswork before the link was understood.

Sailing ship, 1445.

Copy of one of the illuminations of the Shrewsbury Book (1445).

Illustration from Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages from the Seventh to the Seventeenth Centuries, by Henry Shaw, (London, 1843).

(The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

4) Behave well

Discipline was harsh on a Tudor ship.
Rules and punishment were still based on the old ‘Laws of Oléron’ – written on parchment, and nailed to the mast.
A murderer was strapped to his victim and flung overboard.
For theft, dishonourable discharge was followed by traditional punishment.

In the case of Thomas Nash, accused in 1553 of petty theft, this involved being ‘ducked at the yard arm’ – bound then hoisted and plunged into the sea until almost drowned.
Offenders might also be ‘keel-hauled’: dragged under the ship from one side to the other.

Efforts were made to keep order.
Sebastian Cabot forbade “blasphemy of God, or detestable swearing”; “ribaldry, filthy tales, or ungodly talk”, as well as “dicing, carding, tabling” and other “devilish games”.
These could lead to strife, brawling and even murder, and cause disaster by provoking “God’s most just wrath, and sword of vengeance”.

5) Take precautions against pirates

The boundary between piracy and ‘normal’ seafaring was hazier in 16th-century Europe than it is today.
The same men might trade on one voyage, then attack a tempting target on another.

‘Privateering’, as this was called when authorised against ships of an enemy nation, was simply permitted piracy.
Pirate captains were the people a country needed in time of war – brave, remorseless, good sailors – so they were unlikely to be treated too harshly.
And corrupt officials would always turn a blind eye in return for a slice of the loot.

The best means of avoiding risk was to sail well armed, well manned and in convoy (a lone target was more vulnerable).
The reduction of crew to save money was regarded as “a perilous and foolish thrift”.

6) Learn to navigate

We might think the country has always been home to natural sailors, but it isn’t true.
Navigation by celestial bodies was slow to catch on in England.

In England ‘ancient masters of ships’ were usually illiterate.
They stuck to short routes, and tried to keep the coast in view.
They were contemptuous of foreign sailors, with their new-fangled instruments, and of them “that busied themselves with charts”.

Richard Chancellor, chief pilot in 1553, was the first of a new breed: an English sailor who was practical and intellectual.
Not only was he literate, he studied maths and astronomy, and he built instruments to measure the sun and the stars.
Although he died young, his influence lived on, not least in the persons of men like Stephen and William Borough, who sailed with him.

Knowing how to navigate was no guarantee of safety.
And while men could calculate their latitude, no one could measure longitude, but it helped.
It was no coincidence that of three ships that sailed in 1553, it was Chancellor’s that returned to tell the tale.

c1557, Portuguese sailors navigate by astrolabe [an elaborate inclinometer, historically used by astronomers, navigators, and astrologers].

(Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

7) Don’t fall in

Surprisingly few Tudor-era sailors knew how to swim.
It wasn’t an unknown skill, but nor was it common.
In some cases there was a strong superstition against learning: to fall in and survive was felt to deprive sea gods of a body to which they were entitled, and for which retribution would be exacted from the entire crew.

Contact with the New World had increased awareness of men who could swim, though Cabot still warned his crews against attacks by people who did.

8) Be lucky

Perhaps most of all, those on board a Tudor ship needed to be lucky.
Sailing was a desperately dangerous business, even when not many, in any walk of life, could expect to live long by modern standards.
Few sailors, wrote the Tudor historian Richard Hakluyt, lived to ‘grey hairs’.
It could easily happen that, as with Chancellor’s own son, shipwreck could mean curtains at the outset of one’s career – as a young teenager, before there was any chance to progress.

Links :

• British Library : England and the North-East Passage
• The Irish Times : James Evans: As Arctic ice melts, an old dream resurfaces

From multihull to kite with foils : glide and speed

 The Maxi Edmond de Rothschild is the first flying trimaran of the new generation to have emerged in July 2017.

On 17 July 2017, the day of her launch in Vannes, south-west Brittany, the Maxi Edmond de Rothschild joined the legendary Gitana line, a quite unique family maritime saga initiated by the Rothschild clan in 1876 on the shores of Lake Geneva.
see GeoGarage blog

Indeed, she is leading the way in a new generation of large flying offshore trimarans and, needless to say, her debut flights were eagerly anticipated...

His skipper Sébastien Josse is also a touch to everything, keen on gliding and speed.
In this video, he embarks us for a kite navigation foil in the paradisaical archipelago Glénans!

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Levitation : foiled moth fly in the archipel des Glénans
• Iniatives Coeur Imoca 60 vs Gitana

François Gabart - James Spithill : meeting onboard of Macif

François Gabart embarks James Spithill on board the MACIF trimaran for a 48-hour high intensity navigation
Ready to take off? Exceptional immersion for a trip with two great champions.
Sensations guaranteed.