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Friday, March 25, 2016

Boeing’s massive underwater robot can explore the ocean for 6 months

In recent years, unmanned undersea vehicles have improved the exploration of the ocean floor, eliminating the need to send a human or attach an unmanned vessel to a surface ship with a long umbilical cord. Those include Boeing’s Echo Ranger and Echo Seeker underwater robots, which can spend a few days at at time below the surface, with ranges measured in tens or hundreds of miles. That’s progress, but not enough to free the UUV from the need of a nearby surface ship with a human crew.

Those UUVs are "nothing more than an extension, or an application of the surface ship," says Lance Towers, director of sea and land at Phantom Works, Boeing’s R&D arm. "We said, we need to come up with a capability that allows us to operate an autonomous underwater vehicle that does not require a surface ship," Towers says. That was in 2011.

Now, the Echo Voyager can spend six months at a

time exploring the sea, with a 7,500-mile range, no ship needed. Structurally, the 51-foot Voyager’s not too different from its little brothers, the 32-foot Seeker and 18-foot Ranger. The big difference is the introduction of the hybrid rechargeable power system.

Like Boeing’s other UUVs, the 50-ton Voyager runs on lithium-ion or silver zinc batteries that power it for a few days at a time. But instead of scooting over to a ship any time it’s running low on power, the Voyager just fires up a diesel generator that recharges the batteries.

Boeing says customers could use the Voyager to inspect underwater infrastructure, take water samples, create bathymetric maps of the ocean floor, or help with oil and gas exploration.

For more of the Wired story: www.wired.com