Spotted this on BBC news today http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36834761 which led me here.. Underwater drone..  http://www.openrov.com/

Has anyone come across anything like this before?

Mark R said:

Spotted this on BBC news today http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36834761 which led me here.. Underwater drone..  http://www.openrov.com/

Has anyone come across anything like this before?

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The Aditnow Thursday Nighters have an openROV. Might be worth prodding them over there?

Yep,

Something similar was used during the exploration of the Doux de Coly in France in 1998 - but only as a 'support' tool to watch Olivier Isler and his support divers during Olivier's long decompression in the shaft some 400m from the entrance.

The main problem with an ROV in underwater caves is the cable that controls its movements and sends back images. As you can imagine, getting 400m of cable into the cave took some man-power as the ROV cannot drag it through winding horizontal galleries. Once in the shaft, another problem was the ROV getting its cable tangled with other equipment and being unable to sort itself out.

Some amusment was had by Dave Ryall (CDG) during the removal of the cable from the cave. He was tasked with swimming out whilst ensuring the cable end did not get snagged and damaged on the corners as it was pulled out. Dave manfully flippered along as quick as he could until the cable began going faster and faster. Eventually being pulled along in an ever more hazardous nature - nearly getting tanks, lights, regulators ripped off - he just had to let go.

On surfacing he discovered the increase in speed had been because they had fastened the cable to a car and driven it off down the valley!

So, yes, cave diving can be dangerous.....(tee-hee!)

Incidentally, I believe that an ROV has also been used down to 300+m depth in the mainly vertical Fontaine de Vaucluse, though again cable tangles proved a problem during its recovery. Somehere on t'Inteweb, I am sure you can find details of this.

Best Regards

Scoff
CDG

I know at least one of the big offshore drilling companies is investing in and generally playing about with drones, both subsea and in the air.

Wiki - "The first Autonomous Underwater Vehicle was developed at the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington as early as 1957 by Stan Murphy, Bob Francois and later on, Terry Ewart. The "Special Purpose Underwater Research Vehicle", or SPURV, was used to study diffusion, acoustic transmission, and submarine wakes."

"The earliest recorded use of an unmanned aerial vehicle for warfighting occurred on August 22, 1849, when the Austrians attacked the Italian city of Venice with unmanned balloons loaded with explosives... The first pilotless aircraft were built during and shortly after World War I. Leading the way, using A. M. Low's radio control techniques, was the Ruston Proctor Aerial Target of 1916."

Mike

I attended a lecture by Bill Stone at a Congress in the states probably 2009 on the development of a completely autonomous ROV i.e one that was self powered, could be dropped into an overhead environment and would always return to base. The cave diving exploration potential is obvious although the development was directed towards space exploration firstly Europa and latterly Enceladus. The system works but the module is large currently and needs reducing in size.

There's an evocative TED talk by Bill about this, which certainly makes the mind boggle about the future of cave sump exploration.

However I do have to be pedantic about an "autonomous ROV" being a little contradictory.

https://youtu.be/dZ5lT8D25hU

Here's an interview I did with Bill Stone earlier this year, in which he talks about using drones to push the onwards sumps in San Agustin. (it's near the end).

Rob said:

There's an evocative TED talk by Bill about this, which certainly makes the mind boggle about the future of cave sump exploration.

However I do have to be pedantic about an "autonomous ROV" being a little contradictory.

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On reflection its a full on oxymoron.:-[  Should be an AV but that pair of initials is used very frequently.

Rob said:

There's an evocative TED talk by Bill about this, which certainly makes the mind boggle about the future of cave sump exploration.

However I do have to be pedantic about an "autonomous ROV" being a little contradictory.

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There's no doubt that the future of sump exploration will be electronic in many ways. This has been recognised for some time (see BCRA Cave Science 14[2], 1987, pages 66-68). Speaking as a cave diver I find this just a little bit of a shame. Then again, some of the ambitious underwater civil engineering projects which cave divers do still require a great deal of human effort and ingenuity. So us underwater potholers are unlikely to become redundant.

Scoff's mention of the Doux De Coly ROV made me smile. I remember it well. This underwater cave has a large passage leading to a deep shaft Many divers spent a great deal of time in the area of the shaft preparing equipment or acting as decompression "minders".

On my first encounter with the ROV I found it slightly intimidating; this 60 cm globe would appear quietly from nowhere out of the gloom and you felt your every move was being scrutinised by some kind of malevolent robot. But it was possible to use it to communicate with those "upstairs". It had a screen inside on which text would appear when typed by those in the control wagon. You could write messages on a slate and hold this in front of the ROV camera, to those topside could read them. They could make it nod (for "yes") and rotate back and forth (for "no"). We all soon found it was actually quite a friendly beast and became quite fond of it.

I made an ROV using parts from here: http://nventivity.com/roviab.html - I just bought the motors and made the frame and control unit myself.  I used an underwater camera with monitor from Maplins with a 20 m lead.  I tested it in a flooded quarry and also at the Wookey Resurgence where the motors proved not powerful enough against the flow.  it would have been better to use onboard batteries as the power drop down the cable was too great.  The camera kit has been used on numerous occasions to look down wells and also (on a pole) to inspect an underwater dig.

Coincidentally, I've just repurposed the motors to make a lightweight underwater "scooter" using bigger props - going to test it at Vobster tonight.

Bill Stone provided photos of his cave exploring AUV for the Wookey Hole book...

Photos of DEPTHX

Image 1: Shows the DEPTHX vehicle during transport to a quarry in Austin Texas.  Photographer Dominic Jonak.  Credit: Carnegie Mellon University/Dominic Jonak.

Image 2: Shows the DEPTHX vehicle during initial testing and calibration in a quarry in Austin, Texas.  Photographer Dominic Jonak.  Credit: Carnegie Mellon University/Dominic Jonak.

Image 3: Shows the DEPTHX vehicle in Poza la Pilita in Rancho Azufrosa 
in Mexico during testing of the sample acquisition system. 
Photographer David Wettergreen. Credit: Carnegie Mellon University/ David Wettergreen

Image 4: Shows the DEPTHX vehicle in Poza la Pilita in Rancho Azufrosa 
in Mexico during testing of the sample acquisition system. 
Photographer David Wettergreen. Credit: Carnegie Mellon University/ David Wettergreen

Image 5: Three-dimensional maps of the cenotes of Rancho Azufrosa, Mexico created by the DEPTHX autonomous cave exploration robot. Credit: Carnegie Mellon University/Nathaniel Fairfield

Now it needs shrinking to cave diver size and then we can follow it.

Duncan Price said:

Image 5: Three-dimensional maps of the cenotes of Rancho Azufrosa, Mexico created by the DEPTHX autonomous cave exploration robot. Credit: Carnegie Mellon University/Nathaniel Fairfield

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So do you think these things can be used in Sumps for surveying?

And how would it work? would the diver have to put a tag on the line every 10m or so, and the drone pick these up as its scooting along.

essentially, if Price's orange biggun above can be used for surveying, can the technology it has onboard be scaled down and given to a body with fins, a tank and a mask and taken into smaller sumps?

[quote author=PITLAMP]
Speaking as a cave diver I find this just a little bit of a shame. Then again, some of the ambitious underwater civil engineering projects which cave divers do still require a great deal of human effort and ingenuity.[/quote]

I'm sure you'd love to shove one down at the end of Main Rising, just for a look you'd be able to get a drone down there more often for a look to see when conditions are good?

Underwater electronic surveying devices don't rely on tagged lines. They measure distances using ultrasound etc.

Out of interest, several years ago there was another example of a ROV doing an underwater cave survey. Swinden Quarry near Grassington broke through into a very large water-filled void. From memory this was well over 20 m deep and widened out most of the way down into a large chamber. It was far too dangerous to be dived by a human due to the loosenenss of the entry area. The 3D images which were produced revealed the classic form of a natural phreatic cave. I don't think there were any passages going off it, so no need for CDG members to get too excited by the prospects. In any case it was filled in, otherwise quarrying would have had to stop for safety reasons.

Don't worry about the bottom of Main Rising Alastair; it's not too hopeful. Get that sump drained in Cliffhanger and you'll be roaring off westwards. 

. . . and another example; an ROV was used in Magpie Mine (Peak District) in the 80s to search the deep shaft leading down to the flooded Chatsworth Cavern for (if I remember rightly) a murder weapon. (The 50 m [ish] deep shaft was too dangerous to send a human diver into due to deteriorating timber and other debris.)

There'll be an ROV project exploring Deep Ecton Mine soon:

http://www.vmine.net/ecton2013/Noticeboard.asp

and:

http://www.vmine.net/ecton2013/documents/Ecton%20Press%20Release%20January%202016.pdf

Although the middle of that press release contains the following statement, which will probably be replicated elsewhere - let's hope it doesn't get cut off...

The 4-year project with 13 consortium members from 7 EU countries has just received the go-ahead from the European Commission and will enable new technology to develop potential strategies to rework some of Europe?s currently abandoned mines many of which may still contain critical raw materials vital for the UK and Europe?s economy.

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Pitlamp said:

. . . and another example; an ROV was used in Magpie Mine (Peak District) in the 80s to search the deep shaft leading down to the flooded Chatsworth Cavern for (if I remember rightly) a murder weapon. (The 50 m [ish] deep shaft was too dangerous to send a human diver into due to deteriorating timber and other debris.)

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I went down to Chatsworth Chamber in the early 1970's and yes, it was quite scary. I actually did 3 dives, one producing a sketch of the shaft and fixed pipework, then an abandoned dive after my regulator came to pieces and finally a successful dive to the bottom. Happy days!

Thanks for mentioning that - it's very interesting. I'll get in touch via PM over the next few days (as I may ask if I can pick your brains regarding the next Peak District Sump Index).