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More on Underwater Gliders 192

Posted by michael from the stingray dept.
ianjk writes "Abcnews.com is reporting on two underwater gliders developed by the University of Washington and Webb Research. Both use very little energy and have quite long ranges (thousands of kilometers). Of course, the US Navy is showing quite an interest in the project." We mentioned these earlier.
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More on Underwater Gliders More

More on Underwater Gliders

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  • Makes snorkeling a whole lot less interesting..

  • Navy not looking for much... (Score:5, Informative)

    by ZeLonewolf ( 197271 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @02:31PM (#4433934) Homepage
    From a technical Navy employee...

    You would think that the Navy would be getting all sorts of funding for these types of projects nowadays... but really what's happening is that funding is being diverted to war operations type stuff... so those of us working on new technology for the Navy have gotten huge budget cuts...so don't expect much in the way of cool techie things any time soon.
    • Not to worry - the oil revenue from the upcoming Iraq conquest will more than fund new research projects.....
    • From a Naval Officer...

      I can assure you that there are other funds that allow us a great deal of R&D.
      Not only that, but there are several projects similar to this technology that prototypes are developed and tested.

      The upcoming police action (seeing as The President has received permission) is not going to divert funds as much as you are saying. Sure, forces will be split, but I assure you that everything will be normal on the R&D front.
      • As a navy man owe up and call it a war, which is -exactly- what this "police action" will be. Hell, who wants to die in a simple "police action?" The moronic legal doublespeak necessary to choke this down the Constitution's throat is insufferable. Just changing the name of it doesn't the smallest difference, but it does insult people's intelligence.

        Kinda reminds me of Blade Runner:

        "Have you ever retired a human by mistake?"

        I can assure you that there are other funds that allow us a great deal of R&D.

        Like the "new" sonar that kills whales..? [academicpress.com]

        -dameron
      • From a former defense contractor...

        During previous police actions, the services issued across the board budget cuts to pay for it, including anything not directly involved in supporting the action. Until Congress got around to issuing more coin, in-service R&D and ongoing contractor development and production took immediate hits.
    • Oh no! I will start making some cupcakes right away! When is the bake sale?! I know little Timmy won't mind if we give the Navy all those soup labels we have been saving so Timmy's 5th Grade class can get a computer for their classroom. I didn't realize you guys had it so tough...

  • US Navy drones and DSV's (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11, 2002 @02:32PM (#4433941)
    Have been under study for years- the Mk48 Torpedo is basically a wire-guided drone; it reports information back to the mother sub and can be steered using a joystick.

    The USN has been looking into extreme-depth tethered drones- really strange things start happening to sonar and weapons performance at extreme depth.

    Of course, this will all come in handy if the USN needs to fight the Third Battle Of the North Atlantic, but for littoral (inshore) warfare, the navy might want to start researching some brown-water navy stuff.

  • This will ease the Greenies pressure on the Navy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by typical geek ( 261980 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @02:36PM (#4433960) Homepage
    One of the biggest use for these will be as weapons, count on it. And this will get the Greenies off the Navies back (at least until they find some other windmill to tilt at, like deaf whales or something).

    There have been a variety of Navy programs that used trained sea mammals to protect Naval bases, for instance the trained dolphins trained to bump into a VC frogman in Kham Rhan bay, but they never told the dolphins that the bumping hat was an activated mine. Boom!, one less flipper, and one less Charlie.

    There are also reports of using sea lions, seals other cetaceans to watch for submersibles and boats, and hit them, forcing a detonation. For instance, Day of the Dolphin [imdb.com] is a thinly veiled documentary on teh CIA's attempt to train dolphins to blow up Castro's yacht.

    So, with these, everyone will win. The Greenies cute little dolphins don't have to kill, and the US Navy can continue to enforce the Pax Americana, and the rest of the world (except for evildoers) can go about their business, criticizing war mongering Americans, yet profiting from the most peaceful age the world has known since the Roman Empire. We business savvy sorts call that a win-win situation.

    • Pax Americana* (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rupert ( 28001 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @03:00PM (#4434076) Homepage Journal
      *Offer void where prohibited, particularly Cuba. Residents of non-oil-producing countries may experience delays. Not responsible for loss of life or limb in the event that USA fails to support your attempted coup. All oil reserves become the property of Halliburton and Arbusto Inc. Countries in Axis of Evil may be changed without notice, and at the promoters sole discretion. Full rules are kept in a locked closet in the basement of Karl Rove's house and may not be inspected. For a free game piece, send a stamped, addressed envelope to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC. No purchase necessary, although failure to purchase large quantities of US goods will severely impair your chances of winning.

    • Re:This will ease the Greenies pressure on the Nav (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      the greenies may try to pressure the navy, but in the end the navy doesnt GIVE A SHIT.

      there is nothing the greenies can do

    • Pax Americana (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Srin Tuar ( 147269 )

      So, with these, everyone will win. The Greenies cute little dolphins don't have to kill, and the US Navy can continue to enforce the Pax Americana, and the rest of the world (except for evildoers) can go about their business, criticizing war mongering Americans, yet profiting from the most peaceful age the world has known since the Roman Empire.

      Pax Americana?
      The most peaceful age the world has known since the Roman Empire?


      Sure, If you define it as the state of perpetual war that has existed since the 1930's: our governmentt has been going around the world finding excuses to pick a fight with almost anyone, and the result is large numbers of people in a crazed and desperate enough state of mind to fly a perfectly good airplane into a building full of people, and this is, of course, an age of unprecedented peace among mankind?


      Perhaps its due to a preponderance of people who think that naval surveillance drones have something to do with training trusting sea mammals to be suicide bombers...

    • CIA's attempt to train dolphins to blow up Castro's yacht

      But are they ill-tempered, or do they have laser beams attached to their heads?

      (sorry)

    • Americanes Eunt Domus
    • how do they keep the animals from bumping allied units? or each other? (Reading that, I think I've been spending too much time killing nazis)

  • How Deep? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Marco_polo ( 160898 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @02:37PM (#4433967) Homepage
    I wonder how deep these gliders will go? At what depth does the pressure start playing havoc with its sink/swim functions?

    I am really curious as to what we could find if we put a bunch of these in the ocean, and just monitored for objects that don't belong..

    the sunken city of atlantis? :-) but seriously.. I would love to see what kind of data a long term mapping program would compile..
    • I think we could probably develop gliders that would function at impressive depths, but the higher the pressure I would guess the more energy you expend. Since the low-energy feature seems to be a key part of the development I'd say they'll probably stick with gliders that work at relatively shallow depths and low pressures.
    • Well as these use simple blatters, probably whatever depth they naturally would sink to with the blatter full of water. Basically the density of the the rest of the sub, not very deep probably.
      • True, but strap on a few lead plates and problem solved, it would go pretty deep. Release the plates for the final return to surface. Only one trip down and back, but you should be able to do quite a bit of deap water travel in between.

      • Re:How Deep? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by jovlinger ( 55075 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @09:37PM (#4435254) Homepage
        You have a couple of options. First of all, you can recover quite a bit of energy from the work performed by pressure: These devices all have sealed bladders that provide most of the bouyancy on the upslope.

        However, when compressed, they will get hot, and this heat can be used to drive a sterling engine against the temperature sink of the ocean. Likewise, on rising, the bladders will cool, allowing you to drive the sterling engine in reverse, with the bladder as the sink and the ocean as a heat source.

        To provide the necessary extra bouyancy to go from dive to rise, a chemical could be released into a reservoir of seawater (off hand I can't think of such a chemical: you need something which expands the volume of seawater). However, you could likely carry enough of such a chemical for many dives. To go from rise to sink, you need merely vent the cavern, fill it with sea-water, and start over again.

  • Starkist "Glider Safe" Tuna (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11, 2002 @02:37PM (#4433969)
    So what happens when the navy's underwater-spy-glider-drones are picked up in a fishing net?

  • Screw this! (Score:1, Funny)

    by ekrout ( 139379 )
    Forget about this skinny little "underwater glider".

    What every geek really wants is their own luxury submarine [slashdot.org]!

  • I don't think so! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mustangdavis ( 583344 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @02:51PM (#4434025) Homepage Journal
    If next year's open water tests go well, Swean says it's possible that the Navy could be using underwater gliders within two or three years.

    No Way!

    C'mon people ... this is the U.S. Military you are talikg about! That is way to fast for them! Don't go putting pressure like that on them ... it hurts!

  • How About... (Score:3, Funny)

    by SniffleBear ( 604984 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @02:51PM (#4434026)
    Evil sharks with laser beams attached to their heads!

    Heh, really though, why not put the instruments on dolphins. I watched a History Channel program on the Russians strapping surveillance equipment to dolphins and even using radio "mind control" to tell them where to go. Radio controlled dolphins. You'll have an endless supply of them!
    • As long as you could keep them out of tuna nets.
      • > As long as you could keep them out of tuna nets.

        I'd hope so. A radio-controlled dolphin with a mine on its head bumping into a drift net and blowing itself and a thousand tuna into sushi sure sounds like an act of terrorism.

        You never know. Maybe there's a shark in Iraq giving out $25,000 clams to every delfinbomber's family before going out to feast in the resulting chum.

        Where's Great Cthulhu when you need Him?

    • There are several well-known examples, referred to in posts above, of the Navy using dolphins, etc as 'guard whales' or in hare-brained assasination attempts. The best-known story is the one about dolphins who were taught to search for swimmers in the ports of South Vietnam, and poke them with large, head mounted needles which injected a large amount of pressurized gas into the swimmer's body, killing them in a painful manner and depositing them neatly on the surface for someone to find. I have no idea if it ever worked- it seems unlikely to me.

  • thoughts for the future? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ashish Kulkarni ( 454988 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @02:54PM (#4434036) Homepage
    you know, reading articles such as this always leave me with the feeling that we aren't really exploring the use of the seas in future. Almost 70% of the earth is water, but we do not have that much effort or research money in it that we have for space exploration. It's really quite illogical to hope for the stars while ignoring your own backyard. Also considering that pure water is going to be one of the world's biggest problems, we should be paying more attention here.
  • She loves the hot pink underwater glider! It will match all of her outfits, her car, her RV, her house, her guitar, Ken's cardigan and her jetski. I wonder when Presidential Barbie will start bombing Iraq?

  • Underwater bicycle is more interesting (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    http://www.underwaterbike.co.uk/

  • Solar Panels? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cybercomm ( 557435 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @03:00PM (#4434079) Homepage Journal
    They said the batteres would be LiIon and that the submersible would be comming to surface to communicate, so why not add a couple of solar panels? Im sure it won't bring up the costs significantly. (Heck NASA probably already has a bulk discount on solar panels :) Does the depth and salinity in water affect solar panels; is that why they are refraining from using them?

    • Re:Solar Panels? (Score:2, Informative)

      by f97tosc ( 578893 )
      They said the batteres would be LiIon and that the submersible would be comming to surface to communicate, so why not add a couple of solar panels?

      The same reason you don't have solar cells on your car or on your laptop. They simply don't generate nearly enough energy to be worthwhile.

      Does the depth and salinity in water affect solar panels; is that why they are refraining from using them?

      This is not an issue - they can simply be covered with something transparent.

      Tor
      • "The same reason you don't have solar cells on your car or on your laptop. They simply don't generate nearly enough energy to be worthwhile." Actually these submersibles use only 1/2 watt, so a solar pannel would probably provide enough power to keep one of these going for a while after surfacing.
    • why not add a couple of solar panels?

      If they surface at all I'm sure it will be a rapid ascent, transmit a compressed burst then crash-dive to cruising depth - at night.

      They are pretty undetectable and unassailable when they are more than a hundred feet down. I'd wager that they try to avoid it altogether, either by communicating underwater (perhaps with submarines) or by releasing a series of disposable transmitters that float up, transmit, then sink to the bottom.

      -

  • What about infinite battery life? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Andy Dodd ( 701 ) <atd7NO@SPAMcornell.edu> on Friday October 11, 2002 @03:00PM (#4434086) Homepage
    Maybe not quite... Rechargeables decay after a while...

    It looks like at least some of these designs surface periodically for a GPS fix.

    Why not stick a small solar cell on the upper surface? Given the power requirements it shouldn't take too long to recharge. It can probably even recharge a meter or two (or more depending on the water clarity) down from the surface.

  • Wow so fast (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zakabog ( 603757 ) <john&jmaug,com> on Friday October 11, 2002 @03:01PM (#4434098)
    Charles Eriksen, an oceanography professor and one of the developers of the Seaglider, says that such a propulsion system isn't fast. At best, the glider can make about half a knot -- slightly more than half a mile an hour.

    But since it will use only one-half watt of electrical energy to produce that speed, Eriksen says the Seaglider has a range of "thousands of kilometers" and remain in the ocean gather data for much longer.

    "We can operate one of these for a year and across whole ocean basins," says Eriksen.

    I can picture this thing going for a year...

    Some Navy Officer: We've got a special mission for you, we sent out an underwater glider a year ago to collect data on enemy sub movement, we need you to recover the glider.

    Navy Seal: Sir yes sir!

    *goes into the water, takes 10 steps forward, reaches down, picks up glider*

    Navy Seal: Sir I have recovered the glider sir!

  • Interesting to watch (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Shadow2097 ( 561710 ) <shadow2097@nOSpam.gmail.com> on Friday October 11, 2002 @03:02PM (#4434100)
    In the US Air Force and part of the Army, pilots of traditional fighter/bomber aircraft are none too thrilled with the unmanned aerial vehicles. You go from putting it all on the line everytime you strap on the flight suit to sitting in a nice air-conditioned office playing what amounts to a fancy (and amazingly lifelike) video game. There is intense pressure from the pilots to scale this program down immensely.

    The Navy however, has no figher pilot equivalent. The billion dollar war platforms that make up the submarine force are already very unglamorous to work in. The price tag of these ships brings in a whole new player to this battle. Congressmen and women LOVE to see high-priced defense contracts being given to shipyards in their districts.

    If these mini-subs are truly effective and the demand for hugely expensive nuclear powered subs begins to drop, it will be interesting to see which senators favor the modernization of our military vs. those who want more pork barrel projects pumping fuel into their local economies.

    -Shadow

    • I thought that the sub service was considered a prime assignment in the Navy: it may suck to work in a sub, but it sure looks good on your record.


      Or is this not the case?

    • The Navy however, has no figher pilot equivalent.

      No fighter pilot equivalent? What are all those aircraft carriers for, then? Or do I misunderstand your point?
      • I think he meant no water based equivalent (no hot-shot submarine guys).
      • What I meant was that if mini-subs are introduced, the people they're replacing (submarine crews) aren't adrenaline junkies like USAF fighter pilots. I probably should have made that more clear.

        -Shadow

        • I would tend to think that sub captains, XO's, etc. would still be somewhat like a fighter pilot in terms of their ego, but I see your point about the crew not necessarily caring too much. Thanks for the clarification.
      • I think he meant the radio controled planes that the air force uses. You know, the ones that are always on the discovery channel. I am not sure the technology on those is developed enough to land on a carrier. But this is just a theory.
    • America's new drones will be no match for the eventual Chinese clone soldiers :)
    • In the US Air Force and part of the Army, pilots of traditional fighter/bomber aircraft are none too thrilled with the unmanned aerial vehicles

      I saw a documentary about Commanche pilots working with UAVs. They controlled them directly from their cockpits. Every time they needed to take a step deeper into enemy territory, they sent the UAVs just ahead to scout. The pilots loved the things, and it was clear that they made a fantastic team.

      Tor

  • I just... (Score:3, Funny)

    by UniverseIsADoughnut ( 170909 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @03:17PM (#4434176)
    ..Want to see one swallowed by a whale. Imaging the face on the researcher. Then imagine the face on the whale when this thing expands it's ballast to rise.

    Though this would make for an interesting part of ones thesis paper.
  • After reading the article, I was expecting a delta ray type lifting-body. I'm expecting that that would give a much distance/depth efficiency -- and possibly better speed.

    I also agree with the earlier poster -- a 1 Knot 'glider' in a 5 knot current sounds only slightly better than a buoy -- but you may be able to use that 1 knot active motion to do things like move cross-current and use different ocean currents to move you around the ocean.

  • Finally! (Score:4, Funny)

    by gillbates ( 106458 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @03:18PM (#4434183) Homepage Journal
    The glider then rises to the surface and transmits its finding back to the lab using the Iridium satellite communications system

    So someone finally found a use for the Iridium satellites after all!

    • Re:Finally! (Score:2, Informative)

      by f97tosc ( 578893 )
      Actually, US armed forces and the CIA has been using Iridium satellites for all kinds of stuff since they were launched.

      Tor

  • Code name (Score:5, Funny)

    by verloren ( 523497 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @03:21PM (#4434203)
    Rumour has it that the shark community will be code-naming these gliders:

    "Lunch"
  • I can see how this might be a very useful way to carry relatively light cargo across the oceans. As long as the buoyancy of the entire ship is in the right range, it will work. This might be a good way to move floatable objects like Nike Shoes across the oceans. What do you think? Want to build a big sucker?

  • I wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by alaeth ( 78655 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @03:28PM (#4434233) Homepage
    ...if the DEA could use this kind of technology to track all of those 1 a.m. drug running boats from South America.

    Good place for funding at least :)
  • Bit of a loss when some larger fish sees this thing as lunch isnt it?
    • in other news an atomsubmarine from USA was eaten by huge commie WHALE. seriously, there isn't a lot out there that would eat it, or even try.
      • How do you know? Shark are reported to hit surfboards from time to time, probably not trying to eat the human on top, but a case of mistaken identity. It certainly wouldn't surprise me if these things stop transmitting and turn up with a chunk out of them from time to time. In the deep they would probably be hard to spot, and they wouldn't have smells that a shark would recognize (probably).
  • Why not just program the glider to surface every once in a while and recharge its LI batteries from covered solar cells? Eventually you'd have salt encrustation on the cover or something that would reduce the efficiency of solar collection (or cloudy days, more risk of danger from surface storms, etc., though for that you could pipe back meteorological info so that it could wait for calm periods). But it seems like you extend the operational lifetime of these things even longer.

    You could also implement a surface & breathe operation to refill the compressed air tank on the second model. Run a small air pump off the charge from the solar cells. So it takes a couple of days to refill? No problem. Slow but steady.

  • Inventions of Daedalus (Score:4, Interesting)

    by serutan ( 259622 ) <snoopdoug@geekaz ... minus physicist> on Friday October 11, 2002 @03:58PM (#4434429) Homepage
    Wow! The thermal version described in the article is very similar to the "glidoons" proposed in The Inventions of Daedalus [amazon.com] a number of years ago. A glidoon is an inflatable glider containing a substance that is gaseous at sea level and condenses in the cold of high altitude. The craft glides up and down without fuel, driven only by the endlessly reversing buoyancy. Exact same principle, and they really did it!

  • Saltwater Batteries (Score:2, Informative)

    by signingis ( 158683 )
    Why wouldn't they use saltwater batteries [ectechnic.co.uk]? Submarines use them. The only thing they need to come up for anymore is food. They can be made on a much smaller scale that would be suitable for this.
  • What is the potential for weapons deployment with a device like this?

    I am imagining several dozen of these lurking around the North Atlantic waiting for a Soviet Submarine to rumble past. Could it identify an enemy sub and deploy a small torpedo in times of war?
  • The next step is to combine this with an ability to filter feed on plankton and technology from slugbot [uwe.ac.uk] for a machine with infinite endurance.
  • Back in April I wrote about gliders' potential not only on Earth but on other worlds with oceans or dense atmospheres, especially those that feature notable temperature gradients:

    http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technolo gy /sea_glider_020410-1.html

    Erik

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