The objective of the present project is the development of a Remotely Operated Vehicle capable of semi-deep intervention (down to the 1000m range) to be used by the Portuguese scientific community in a variety of ocean research missions. Such a vehicle will allow for the investigation of a group of poorly known environments, including the Portuguese continental shelf, where the large majority of national fisheries are deployed, and the upper levels of the different canyons that cut into the Portuguese platform and that condition the Portuguese bathial environments to a high extent. Off the shelf vehicles can be found, capable of operating down to the proposed depth range, but none with the type of specifications needed for environmental observation and monitoring, namely in what relates to accurate positioning and work capacity sensors and probe installation, sampling gear, video signal processing, etc.

The key technical contribution of the project is the enhancement of a basic ROV structure to enable precise vehicle navigation, guidance, and control as well as acoustic and vision data acquisition, pre-processing, and transmission to a support ship. This will enable maneuvering the ROV along pre-determined searching paths without tight human supervision. Furthermore, it will endow scientific end-users with the capability to survey the ocean floor with great precision by acquiring, among other, side-scan, video, and photo images that are accurately time and position tagged, allowing for mapping of the sea-floor. The user is thus relieved from the tedious and often unsuccessful task of trying to achieve precise vehicle control, namely in the presence of sea currents, effectively shifting the focus of the whole operation to scientific data assessment and overall mission control.

Another objective of the project is the possibility of applying a new concept by developing a modular vehicle, capable of being reconfigured for different purposes and mission scenarios. Indeed, no vehicle will meet directly the need of different configuration levels, enabling its use from different vessels and at a variety of depth ranges from shallow intervention (c.a. 400m) onboard light vessels of opportunity to deep diving (down to c.a. 1000m) from a dedicated ship and a quick response time to solicitations such as unpredictable environmental phenomena (e.g. submarine eruptions, spills or other accidents).

The proposing team brings together to the core of the project complementary expertises:

i) the technical competence to develop such a vehicle from a brand system (ISR-IST);
ii) the experience of operation of ROVs in the Portuguese environments (IMAR-LMG, CREMINER);
and
iii) the capacity to operate the vehicle at sea under a wide range of different conditions (IH).

This is an important step in the development of collaborative ventures between science and technology, where either of the two components directly depends on the contribution from the other. The concept also opens the possibility of addressing specific needs of end-users, including social concerns, namely relating to natural resources management. Finally, the proposal includes the execution of specific surveys at sea. This will allow for the actual testing and demonstration of the vehicle capacities, both in its original configuration and after project development.