Resident Autonomous Underwater Vehicles: Test Platforms for Off Planet Ocean Exploration

Long-term, persistent robotic systems for ocean observation are in their infancy. They offer the potential for detecting and rapidly responding to transient events and complex processes in the Earth's ocean that are not well understood, including erupting submarine volcanoes (Manalang, Delaney, 2016), sudden instabilities in methane hydrate deposits, marine mass-wasting events, turbidite flows, the ecological impacts of major earthquakes, breaking of internal waves, the fate of mid-water vortices, episodes of anoxic upwelling, and early stages/causes of ocean acidification. We consider a resident Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) system, and capable of autonomous detection of chemical plumes and the potential for detecting life in situ.