Review of Autonomous Undersea Vehicle (AUV) Developments 
AUTONOMOUS OCEAN SAMPLING NETWORK (AOSN) [32,33,34,35] 
The long-term goals of this project are to create and demonstrate a reactive ocean survey 
system, capable of long-term unattended deployments in remote environments. Such a system 
is referred to as an Autonomous Ocean Sampling Network (AOSN). The work described 
Institute of below is the product of a collaboration of research groups at MIT, Woods Hole 
Oceanographic Institution, SIO, University of Washington, and Northeastern University. The 
objective of this project is to create and demonstrate the next-generation robotic oceanographic 
survey system. This is being accomplished by: 
1) Creating small, high-performance mobile platforms capable of several month 
deployments. Both propeller-driven, fast survey vehicles and buoyancy-driven glider 
vehicles have been developed. 
2) Creating an infrastructure that supports controlling, recovering data from, and 
managing the energy of, remotely deployed mobile platforms. Elements include 
moorings, docking stations, acoustic communications, two-way satellite communications, 
and the Internet. 
3) Demonstrating these capabilities in science-driven field experiments. 
4) Developing operational techniques that make most effective use of these new assets, 
including adaptive sampling strategies. 
44 
