Document Actions
AUV Fest 2008
AUV Fest 2008 forms a collaborative effort between NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (OER), Office of Naval Research (ONR), and Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) to demonstrate advanced technology on Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV). The Navy develops this technology to search for and destroy undersea mines that threaten our military forces. During AUV Fest 2008, a group of archaeologists will use these instruments to examine a number of historic shipwrecks in Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay including two British warships lost during the American Revolution.
Ocean Sciences 2010 - Call for Abstracts!
Every other year, the ONR hosts a demonstration of AUVs used to find and identify buried underwater mines. Many of the sensors and methods used to find mines have direct applications to underwater archaeology but their cost normally makes them unavailable to researchers. Giving maritime archaeologists experience in the use of these systems and the opportunity to use them in their own research can substantially advance this field. These instruments operate on several scales using acoustic, magnetic, and optical sensors. They can complete high resolution broad area surveys and locate and identify individual targets. They can even create high resolution 3D images of buried objects.
AUV Fest 2008 will take place at NUWC in Newport, RI in May 2008. A small group of maritime archaeologists will work with each AUV team to gather data on four shipwreck sites. A public workshop on AUVs in maritime archaeology, held at the University of Rhode Island Bay campus, will present the outcome of the event. Archaeologists can provide a new perspective for use of these instruments beyond the intended DoD applications which will demonstrate an expanded use of this advanced technology.
The environmental conditions in Narragansett Bay (temperature, depth, turbidity, currents, and sea state) typify the marine temperate littoral regions that challenge mine hunting operations and archaeologists trying to locate shipwrecks as well. Presently, standard acoustic sensors and magnetometers comprise typical tools used for search and discovery in archaeology.
Applying the advanced technology used in AUV Fest will efficiently locate small, buried artifacts or those composed of difficult to detect materials. Shipwrecks contain objects made from wood, metals, ceramic, glass, and numerous other organic/inorganic materials that may correlate with today’s marine mines.
Maritime archaeology research on the naval battle of Valcour Island in Lake Champlain, a confrontation between American and British forces in 1776, provides an example of how helpful this technology may become. Archaeologists are trying to track the naval action based on the location of shot, cannon balls, and materials lost off ships as the battle progressed; items that have become popular souvenirs for scuba divers. State resource managers are tasked with protecting and preserving the site but available technology has limited effectiveness to detect the small objects on the lake bottom. Such research questions provide a new challenge to the Navy community, which has traditionally aimed its tools at specific “mine like” objects. The opportunity to approach a new problem is likely to lead to new understanding of the underlying technology and thus greater innovation.
