In the Rapid Environmental Picture exercise of 2019, it was possible to demonstrate the automatic generation of optimized plans that take into account predicted surface currents.
The generated plan was used to command an AUV to travel up the Sado river while minimizing the energy and time required to do it.
Continuing a collaboration with oceanographers (CESAM, CCMAR and CIIMAR), a prototype of the ENDURANCE system was put to test to track automatically the Douro river's salinity plume.
Two AUVs deployed on Douro outfall, were able to detect the salinity difference between river and ocean water and, with that, track the plume autonomously by generating plans onboard (adaptive sampling).
In a collaboration with oceanographers and the Portuguese navy, long-endurance AUVs integrating several results from ENDURANCE project were enployed to map the outflow of the Sado river, off Sesimbra.
The vehicles travelled between the surface and 20 meters in a region having dense traffic. The success of the operations was only possible by using AIS to prevent collisions and allowing the vehicles to be controlled using satellite / GSM communications.
Using results from the ENDURANCE project (supervision over web, back-seat executive), we have teamed with researchers from CIIMAR to study the Douro River plume.
The AUV was deployed on Douro's outfall and made a 3 km trasect out into the ocean and back into the river mouth for recovery.
This marks the initial tests for long-endurance missions took place off Leixões. An AUV was operated using a newly developed back-seat executive that communicated the AUV state periodically (via GSM / Iridium) and kept executing a 1km square mission while sampling the water column