Uncrewed Systems for Hydrographic Surveying

Uncrewed Systems

Harnessing the technology of uncrewed vehicles in surveying expands NOAA's capacity to survey in shallow waters and increases efficiency in deeper water. NOAA's Office of Coast Survey has been investigating the use of uncrewed survey systems to support hydrographic survey operations since 2004, beginning with small, portable Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) for emergency response and special project surveys. Since then Coast Survey has expanded its use of both small and large uncrewed surface vehicles (or USVs) for hydrographic surveys in support of navigation safety, emergency response, and seafloor mapping.

What are Uncrewed Surface Vehicles?

Uncrewed surface vehicles are marine craft equipped with navigation safety, hydrographic, and oceanographic sensors that perform survey operations without a person onboard. Uncrewed surface vehicles can be remotely controlled or follow pre-programmed routes, either within visual sight or over-the-horizon. In all cases, the vehicles are under continuous supervision of qualified operators.Vehicles range in size and capabilities from small, portable battery-powered systems with an operational endurance up to eight hours to large, diesel-powered systems capable of operating for several days.

Why does Coast Survey use Uncrewed Surface Vehicles?

Efficiency — reduce cost or time to produce products, and make more efficient use of crewed ship time.
Enhanced Capabilities — improve responsiveness, expand ability to collect data that is otherwise inaccessible, and improve data quality.
Personnel Management — allow our workforce to focus more on advanced, or tasks that require their expertise.

Uncrewed Surface Vehicles USVs in use by Coast Survey

Small vehicles

Coast Survey's navigation response teams operate small uncrewed surface vehicles equipped with multibeam bathymetric sonars and side scan imaging sonars to enhance their capabilities to respond to natural and maritime disasters. These allow the team to rapidly deploy survey capabilities and collect data in very shallow water where crewed platforms cannot safely operate.

Large vehicles

Coast Survey, in partnership with NOAA's Uncrewed System Operations Center (UxSOC), operates large, multi-day endurance uncrewed surface vehicles USVs in tandem with NOAA's hydrographic survey ships to increase the survey efficiency of the ships.