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ONR and NOAA Participate in Deep Partnership

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS080530-10
Release Date: 5/30/2008 1:44:00 PM

By Colin Babb, Office of Naval Research Public Affairs

NEWPORT, R.I. (NNS) -- Navy technologists with the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and archaeologists with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found common ground during two-week test and demonstration of autonomous underwater vehicles.

On May 22, specialists from seemingly incongruent worlds—mine warfare and marine archaeology—brought to a conclusion a special two-week collaborative event hosted by the Naval Undersea Warfare Center at Newport, R.I. Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Festival (AUVfest) 2008, cosponsored by the ONR and NOAA, showcased the advanced capabilities of about a dozen next-generation unmanned vehicles and their application in finding hidden objects underwater.

For more than a decade, ONR has sponsored a series of AUVfests to test new autonomous underwater technology and demonstrate how it can be used in the field of mine countermeasures. This year, a partnership with NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration provided a unique opportunity for Navy-developed technology to be applied to underwater archaeology. AUVfest 2008's host, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, lies close to numerous historic shipwrecks in Narragansett Bay, and event participants were able to search for and document objects and wrecks on the sea bottom in a way that had never been possible before with traditional methods of surveying.

During the course of AUVfest, operators and archaeologists discovered that they had a lot to learn from each other. They also learned that their quest to find objects underwater—be they deadly sea mines or 18th-century cannon—is greatly aided by autonomous technology that takes much of the tedium, and danger, out of their business.

"What I really appreciated out of this event is watching the archaeologists and the technologists get excited about each other's business," said ONR demonstration manager William Schopfel, who coordinated the event. "The enthusiasm that we generated through both communities was a lot of fun for me—because normally I'm only dealing with only one community."

One of the wrecks that was of particular interest during the event, HMS Cerberus, a British frigate that was scuttled during a French attack on Newport in 1778, poignantly signified AUVfest's connections. A year before it was destroyed, the Cerberus had been the target of an unsuccessful attack by an early sea mine developed by American submarine inventor David Bushnell.

Today, underwater mines remain as deadly as ever. In fact, since World War II, mines have accounted for more U.S. Navy ships sunk or damaged than all other causes combined. The threat posed by these silent, patient weapons inspires today's inventors and technologists to come up with innovative solutions.

ONR is working on a wide range of autonomous vehicles, sensors, and other technologies designed to search for and classify—and, eventually, neutralize—sea mines. Among the ONR-developed vehicles represented at AUVfest this year was REMUS, an ONR technology, that helped clear the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr in 2003 and is now used by mine clearance and explosive ordnance disposal professionals around the world.

Also at the event, was a complete Mine Countermeasures Mission Module, which last year was delivered to the first Littoral Combat Ships, the USS Freedom (LCS 1). The module is composed of the Battlespace Preparation Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (BPAUV) as well as other technology. Current research focuses on making the AUVs of tomorrow smaller, smarter, and better able to communicate and work with each other while accomplishing more tasks on their own. The hope is that in the near future, these vehicles will also be able to neutralize and destroy mines autonomously as well.

"I've been doing this for the Office of Naval Research for a little over twelve years," said Schopfel, "and the reason why I'm still doing this for the Office of Naval Research is because I believe in what the technologies are doing and that eventually the technologies will save the lives of the Marines and Sailors that are out doing the work today."

For more news from Office of Naval Research, visit www.navy.mil/local/onr/.