Maneuvering Under
The Ice
AUV Development in the Arctic
By Gina Millar • Linda Mackay
W
ith Arctic and Antarctic exploration on the minds of
government, academia and industry, there is extensive discussion on approaches to surveying these technically challenging areas.
Canada’s Arctic waters are vast, and its coastlines are
among the longest in the world.
With the continual increase in vessel traffc, shipping
opportunities, and renewed interest in oil and gas exploration in these waters, charting the largely unsurveyed subsea
terrain has become the foremost priority, with additional
concerns of safe passage and environmental impact to local
communities.
Being the only AUV manufacturer with deepwater platforms that have successfully overcome the formidable logistical feats of data collection in the Arctic, International
Submarine Engineering Ltd. (ISE), based in Port Coquitlam,
Canada, has become a leader in felding this diffcult environment.
Jim McFarlane, president of ISE, and his team of AUV
professionals have paved the way with groundbreaking platforms to charter these under-ice conditions and collect the
data needed.
Background
ISE’s Arctic AUV capability has its genesis in ARCS, the
frst platform to successfully perform obstacle avoidance
and surveying in 1986. This provided the underpinnings of
Theseus.
The history of ISE’s Arctic adventures began in 1992.
The Canadian government wanted to lay a section of fber
cable in ice-covered water off Ellesmere Island to connect
to an offshore observatory. Theseus, a large under-ice AUV
platform was designed and built for this purpose. In 1995,
Theseus successfully deployed 200 kilometers of fber-optic
cable and made a safe return.
Over the last 30 years, ISE’s Arctic technology has progressed from scientifc applications into commercial products on the latest survey vehicles, including a focus on obstacle avoidance, pipe-tracking capabilities and real-time
data collection.
“Obstacle avoidance plays a good role in promoting
pipeline-following capabilities since the need is to search
the route for unexpected things,” said Jeff Williams, an underwater robotics specialist and leading AUV expert. “If the
task is to follow a programmed route with unexpected haz-
(Photo Credit: NRCan)
An Arctic wolf.
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35
(Photo Credit: DRDC)
(Photo Credit: DRDC)
(Top) ISE’s Theseus AUV under the ice. (Middle) The Arctic
Explorer team in an ice tent. (Bottom) The Explorer AUV in
the ice.
ards, the ISE vehicle is perfect for the job. We have operated
in some amazingly steep terrain in Japan recently where the
bottom avoidance capabilities of the AUV have saved us
from hitting the seafoor several times.”
Williams said that the Explorer was on a 6-kilometer transit between survey sites 1,400 meters deep. Because of the
excellent terrain-following capability, there was a lower risk
in sending the AUV between sites over imprecisely surveyed
terrain than in bringing it up in marginal weather conditions
and performing an additional launch/recovery cycle.
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Explorer AUVs in the Arctic
Arctic exploration is steadily gaining momentum. Because of thick ice cover and the cost of
icebreaker operations, some areas are diffcult
or impossible to survey using traditional shipmounted or towed sonar arrays. The data quality that is possible from the low-altitude survey
provided by an AUV is highly desirable.
In 2008, ISE was contracted by Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) and Defence Research
and Development Canada (DRDC) to provide
two Arctic-capable Explorer AUVs for bathymetric data collection in the high Arctic. The
data were part of Canada’s
submission for sovereignty
over submarine areas under the United Nations
Convention on the Law of
the Sea (UNCLOS), Article
76.
The Arctic Explorers
were required to travel up
to 450 kilometers from a
main camp on shore-fast
ice to a remote camp on
a drifting ice foe in the
target survey location.
This meant the AUV was
required to travel up to 74
hours under ice unsupervised—an AUV record.
Once the AUV left the
main camp, it was to remain under the ice for the
duration of the mission, which was planned for up to three
weeks. As a result, the batteries had to be charged and a new
mission plan downloaded while the AUV was submerged.
Through collaboration with DRDC, ISE developed several revolutionary technologies for these vehicles: an acoustic
homing system that controlled the AUV trajectory for up to
40 kilometers during the approach to the ice camp, an oilflled closed variable ballast system that allowed the AUV
to park under the ice or on the seafoor, and an under-ice
charging and data transfer system (known as the Canadian
AUV Through-Ice Capture and Hold System, or CATCHY).
In preparation for the operations, ISE put the AUVs and
equipment through several rounds of testing. The INU was
tested in Alert, Nunavut, to verify its accuracy at high latitudes, then again at the Canadian Forces Maritime Experimental and Test Ranges (CFMETR) at Nanoose Bay to evaluate its deepwater performance. ISE modifed the Explorer to
provide the increased autonomy required for the long, unsupervised missions and extensively simulated and reviewed
each mission.
In the spring of 2010, after many days of delay due to
poor weather, ISE arrived at the main ice camp south of Borden Island. Due to lost time, the scope of the deployment
had to be reduced to three, 350-kilometer missions with
one vehicle.
Despite this, the Arctic Explorer “Yamoria” remained underwater for a total of 12 days and successfully surveyed
more than 1,000 kilometers of terrain.
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(Top) Two NRCan Explorers on ISE’s MV Researcher during sea trials in Nanoose Bay, British Columbia. (Bottom)
NRCan, DRDC-operated Explorer AUV during operations in the Arctic for the Franklin Expedition project.
(Photo Credit: ISE)
essarily imply the end of
the cruise. It also leads
to lower long-term maintenance costs. Secondly,
the addition of foreplanes
and an obstacle avoidance
system makes them highly maneuverable. They
can safely navigate close
to the seafoor, which is
highly desirable for activities such as pipe tracking.
Lastly, their modular and
fexible design allows for
full integration of the subsea industry’s leading scientifc and survey equipment. New equipment
can easily be added or removed during its lifetime
or even between deployments. Owners of Explorers have easily added cutting-edge payload,
including synthetic aperture sonars (SAS) and
magnetometers.
Explorers have also been outftted with a geochemical instrument suite for seafoor mineral
exploration. “Explorer AUVs are an ideal platform for magnetic mapping of [deep-sea mineral] deposits as magnetic data can be collected
simultaneously with sonar and water chemistry
data,” said Matthew Kowalczyk, CEO of Ocean Floor Geophysics (Vancouver, Canada).
In 2014, the Arctic Explorers were instrumental in pinpointing the location of Erebus, one of two historical downed
vessels that were a part of Captain Sir John Franklin’s 1845
expedition to fnd the Northwest Passage. The Explorers,
now owned and operated by DRDC, were outftted with a
Kraken (Conception Bay South, Canada) InSAS to assist with
the search and provide highly detailed images of the wreck.
“The Arctic Explorer AUV is unique and amazing technology,” said Marc-André Bernier, chief of underwater ar-
(Photo Credit: Parks Canada)
In 2011, ISE had a chance to return to the Arctic for another survey operation, this time deploying the AUVs from
the icebreaker Louis S. St. Laurent. Again, the AUVs performed admirably and contributed valuable bathymetric
data to the UNCLOS submission.
More Explorers in the Field
Explorer AUVs are leaders in a range of scientifc and
commercial AUV operations. First of all, they are highly
feld-serviceable. This means that with an appropriate cache
of spare components, a failure in the feld does not nec-
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37
chaeology sciences for Parks Canada. “Having such an asset
as part of our survey to locate the lost vessels of Sir John
Franklin’s lost expedition gave our search team a greatly improved capacity to successfully achieve our goal.”
ISE was proud to have contributed to the Canadian government’s search and study of this long-lost historical artifact.
New Technology
ISE continues to innovate underwater technology. A
prime example is the progression of the technologies developed for Arctic missions. Using the Arctic AUV version
as a baseline, the variable ballast system was reimagined
as an air ballast parking system on new Explorers. An AUV
equipped with this system can park on the seafoor in a lowpower state until it receives an acoustic command to continue its mission, or for a fxed amount of time determined
by the mission.
The mission-override interface, developed for the Arctic
homing system, has continued to be improved, leading to
new levels of autonomy for the Explorer. Clients have added
payload systems that can take control of the AUV’s trajectory, then seamlessly transition back to a planned mission.
For instance, Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN)
uses mission override to test their qualitative navigation system, a fully autonomous path-following algorithm. “This
feature is highly fexible and robust,” said Peter King, of the
MERLIN Lab at MUN.
Experience with commercial survey operations has resulted in an onboard image generation system developed
collaboratively with MUN. This system preprocesses sonar
data into image tiles that can be viewed immediately upon
recovery of the vehicle, or acoustically while the mission
is underway. This allows operators to interactively change
sonar settings or abort a dive if the equipment is not functioning.
What’s Next?
With new autonomy technologies frmly in hand and
the challenge of robotic applications in harsh conditions
successfully overcome, ISE continues to be sought after for
ideas and contribution to technologies on the horizon. One
such thought process leans toward subsea resident vehicle
(SRV) technology. This second stage of data transfer and vehicle recharge technique is a natural progression and fne
complement to the Explorer AUV. Cost-effective measures
are high here, which means the combination of the already
high maneuverability of Explorer and the engineering and
design of seafoor residency will soon be realized. n
Gina Millar is a senior systems engineer at ISE. She has more than a decade
of experience designing AUVs, ROVs and other robotic systems. In 2010 and
2011, Millar was part of the ISE AUV team conducting an underwater survey
for Natural Resources Canada in the Arctic. She has a bachelor’s in engineering from Simon Fraser University and is a registered professional engineer with
the Association of Professional Engineers. Millar was a speaker at Underwater
Intervention 2015 in New Orleans, Louisiana, and OTC Arctic Technology Conference 2015 in Denmark.
Linda Mackay has been the manager of marketing and communications for
ISE for the past 10 years. She holds a bachelor’s in marketing management
from BCIT and receives daily education on the physics, design concepts and
capabilities of ISE’s subsea vehicles. She has consistently developed the marketing programs for ISE’s platforms, assisting with their visibility to the offshore,
military, science and research communities.
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