The Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for Deep-sea Borehole Reentry Project is an independent, coordinated undertaking of researchers through the France-USA Cooperative Programs in Oceanography. The U.S. research participants will be known as the Hawaii Research Team, which consists of researchers from the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research (PICHTR), the University of Hawaii (UH), and Makai Ocean Engineering. Institut Francais de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER) has been performing the independently funded French effort. This work will continue with newly committed funding in cooperation with the Hawaii team. The project's aim is two-fold: first, to advance the state-of-the-art of autonomous underwater vehicles, and second, to develop technologies needed by geologists to facilitate automatic reentry of deep-sea boreholes so that new exploratory, experimental tools may be deployed economically. The Hawaii researchers will develop teleoperated and autonomous functions for the underwater system, including teleoperation, adaptive control, artificial intelligence, computer vision, sensing, modeling, simulation, and communication, as well as miniaturization and ruggedization of developed technologies.
