Design Considerations for Deep-Ocean Scientific Robotic Vehicles

Oceans cover 72% of the Earth's surface, house immense living and nonliving resources, and play a key role in regulating the planet's climate. Robotic vehicles are essential for exploring vast deep-ocean resources, spatiotemporal monitoring of oceans to understand the patterns of climate change, monitoring marine pollution, providing defense, and identifying assets lost in the oceans. The article discusses key design considerations for realizing safe, reliable, and efficient deep-ocean unmanned and manned robotic vehicles capable of operating in challenging environments characterized by high hydrostatic pressure, low temperature, salinity, darkness, dynamic medium, and soft seabed conditions. Strategic technologies to enable cost-effective and increased spatiotemporal monitoring including homing and docking stations, autonomous intervention vehicles, swarm robotic systems, and bio-inspired vehicle designs are discussed.