We investigated the effect of autonomous underwater vehicle\u00a0(AUV) dynamics and navigation on underway submarine gravimetry. Our research was motivated by the need to obtain spatially dense marine gravity measurements close to the source of\u00a0subkilometer-scale geologic features in the shallow oceanic\u00a0crust. Such measurements have been previously obtained, for\u00a0instance, with piloted submarines and towed sleds; however,\u00a0the high cost and, in the case of on-bottom measurements, poor\u00a0spatial sampling preclude routine acquisition of these measurements. Continuous underway gravity surveys with AUVs is a\u00a0compelling cost-effective option, but this method requires separating the AUV accelerations from the measured gravity. We\u00a0show that AUVs with a large distance between the center of\u00a0buoyancy and the center of gravity have lower vertical accelerations than torpedo-shaped AUVs and consequentially are better\u00a0suited for underway gravity surveys. Furthermore state estimators, which combine sensor measurements and models of the\u00a0vehicle\u2019s motion, provide superior estimates of the vehicle\u2019s\u00a0vertical accelerations than methods used in previous underway\u00a0submarine gravity surveys. We simulated the use of these navigation methods in detecting dike swarms at the East Pacific\u00a0Rise. Analysis showed that we can shorten filters used in\u00a0reducing gravity data and consequentially provide improved\u00a0measurements of the free-water anomaly with a minimal detectable spatial wavelength approximately 65% lower than previously reported results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dynamics and Navigation of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles for Submarine Gravity Surveying J.C. Kinsey, M.A. Tivey and D.R Yoerger. Geophysics. 78(3):G55-G68, 2013. We investigated the effect of autonomous underwater vehicle\u00a0(AUV) dynamics and navigation on underway submarine gravimetry. Our research was motivated by the need to obtain spatially dense marine gravity measurements close to the source of\u00a0subkilometer-scale…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":659,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/jameskinsey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/712"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/jameskinsey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/jameskinsey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/jameskinsey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/jameskinsey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/jameskinsey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":722,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/jameskinsey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/712\/revisions\/722"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/jameskinsey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/jameskinsey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}