Surveying the underside of an Arctic ice ridge using a man-portable AUV

摘要

In April 2007 a man-portable Gavia underwater vehicle was deployed to perform high-resolution bathymetric surveys of the underside of the Arctic ice cap at the SEDNA ice camp in the Beaufort Sea. Deployment and recovery was through a single hole in the steadily drifting ice cap. The vehicle was flown inverted for optimum use of its normally down-facing payload sensors, which included the GeoSwath 500 swath bathymetry sonar providing co-registered high-resolution swath bathymetry and sidescan sonar imagery, and a high-frame rate digital camera simultaneously providing a continuous photographic survey.