149 



representative samples of the organisms under investigation, the only known 

 sampling capability at present is a device for collection of near-bottom plankton 

 from the towed vehicle DEEP TOW. 



Two programs are required to address the requirements for biological sampling 

 and assay. The first program is to consult with pertinent NOAA program investi- 

 gators to establish the desired capabilities of an ROV sampling/storage device 

 for planktonic, nektonic and benthic organisms. Following this a prototype 

 sampling system (s) should be designed and constructed and field-tested on 

 existing ROVs to assess its effectiveness. The second program, a parallel 

 effort, should assess the state-of-the-art in photographic pattern recognition 

 and adopt or modify the most promising of these techniques to bio-assays in 

 accordance with NMFS requirements. 



6. 3 Long-Term Research and Development Programs 



6.3.1 Untethered Vehicle Technology 



There are several factors which make the concept of an untethered ROV attractive: 

 1) the major cause of present vehicle operational delays and loss is cable 

 entanglement; 2) the depth of offshore oil and gas exploration and exploitation 

 is steadily increasing (exploratory drilling took place in 1,324m of water 

 off the west coast of Africa in 1978, several wells are now being drilled in 

 water depths in excess of 1,000m off the east coast of Canada), consequently, 

 the umbilical cable lengths required to operate in these depths will introduce 

 severe drag problems and potentially greater entanglement problems, and 3) 

 exploratory drilling is proceeding in areas where an ice cover can be antici- 

 pated for the majority of the year (e.g., the Davis Strait), which precludes 

 support by surface-dependent techniques during the winter months. 



Sections 2.3, 5.2, and 5.5 identified programs which are currently involved 

 in research and development of technologies supportive of untethered vehicle 

 development. There is, however, no U.S. program which plans to capitalize 

 on these future developments by ultimately bringing the end products together 

 into a prototype operational vehicle combining real-time, thru-water television 

 transmission, a mission-oriented operational duration and significant operating 

 depth. If the technological problems now being addressed are successful, other 

 problems remain. These include vehicle command/control techniques, navigation, 

 launch/retrieval and integration of the individual components and sub-systems 

 into an operational unit. 



6.3.2 Manipulation 



If the current deep-water drilling projects result in a commercial discovery 

 beyond 450m there is no diving capability available to deploy a diver at these 

 depths. The only means available are ROVs and manned vehicles. While the 

 GE-designed manipulators on ORCA (see Section 2.1.7.d) are a great step forward in 

 manipulation technology, they are not equivalent to human dexterity. The 

 work at MIT in manipulation is also impressive, but it too falls short of 

 the mark when compared to the human. A manipulator with menory should find 

 application to many maintenance/inspection projects, but much of the diver's 

 work entails repair, and in this type of work no two repair tasks will be 

 absolutely identical. Consequently, the ability to conduct repetitive manipulative 

 tasks without human intervention does not provide a major advantage. 



