Page 29 - Auv News Today

>> the last thing you want to do is introduce another noise source in the area where you are trying to listen carefully and the auv will produce noise. its not uncommon to get false signals from any equipment that might be producing noise whether it is on the ship, the auv or perhaps something in the tpl itself. you want to make sure you are keeping random noise out of the search area. >> geoffrey, do you concur? >> absolutely. the matter is the pingers can cover six times the area that the blue...

Matthew is being a little bit conservative, but rightfully so. it is fairly rugged terrain, you take the risk of losing the vehicle or damaging the vehicle and also you have got to change ships on board the ships. so it is not a trivial thing to change just from the towed pinger locater to this auv under water drone. he is doing the right thing, i would be chomping at the bit to get the vehicle in the water and start facing that northern slope. >> all right, lots of questions, let us know what y...

Submersible equipment until they exhaust the possibility of the batteries still operating and emitting the pings? >> i think the time line is so fine, such a small scale that it doesnt make a lot of difference. the batteries look to me that theyre on their way out. the auv, i suspect, will be deployed in the next day. they may choose to bring in other sonar assets in order to speed up scanning the sea floor. >> the ocean silk could be significant especially when youre looking for two relatively ...

Was supposed to be, and the information had never been seen like this before. so pulling it together, wolf, i think that the way in which they have moved forward, and the australians have done a stunning job, to be sure, the edge of science. i think what we are now seeing is the closest to resolution and i think youre going to see it happen sooner rather than later. >> when do you think, realistically, theyre going to put that bluefin, that submersible device to try to find wreckage actually int...

Its called an auv, an autonomous underwater vehicle. and it uses side scan sonar. you can see it right here, to create that picture. it he is also equipped with a gps system. you can see it right over here. and of course, that lets the crew know where this probe is at any point in time. it has been used before to identify and help recover plane wreckage. it would be able to narrow the debris field. for demonstration purposes, its tethered. that would not be the case, of course, in the indian oce...

Out front, investigation on exactly how that triangulating will be happening. but joining me now is bob ballard, the underwater explorer who found the wreckage of the titanic. bob, its great to have you with us. you know more about this than anyone. you recently have gotten planes out of the water. so here is the bottom line question. do you think that they are now looking in the right spot? >> yes. it looks like the search area is collapsing to a square that you can now mount the next vehicle s...

And the path theyve been taking to locate the pings. well throw that up there. they want to continue doing this how many more pings do they want? >> they want as many as they possibly can. he was asked that again and again. well, how many do you need? how many do you need? youve got four. until they are absolutely certain that they batteries have died, because as he said, ill quote his words, theres no second chance. once theyve gone, theyve gone. you need as much information here so that when y...

He believes is the weakening of the signal that they are likely to go to those autonomous underwater vehicles relatively shortly. >> i think as the confident dense grows that this is grows that this is the location and more returns from the pingers, you can say with certainty when you stop hearing them what happened. wheres we didnt know if it you a fluke before or not. with four or five and if we get to six and seven and they get less and less you can say with certainty the batteries are died. ...

Really astounding engineer work and astounding data reduction, if in fact the location they pointed us to is the accurate location. it is certainly promising having detections in the water. i need more confidence to say it is an acoustic beacon. i need to regularly re-acquire that signal so that i can accurately put the auv down on it. that would be astounding. now, if i just search around the areas that we have had the periodic detection of the beacons, you are probably talking to get a good co...

Really -- there was a couple of months during december that we wanted to avoid, november we wanted to avoid. this isnt the bad type. also, theyve got a bigger ship than we have. and that will help things. the only difference is with putting an auv in and out of the water really, you somewhat get limited in terms of what kind of conditions you can do that in. you cant do that in heavy swells or in big waves. >> good information, david. and thank you, richard. richards going to stick around. when ...