the Question is the first and main: and what’s, actually, a novelty and cause for pride?
the Depth of the Mariana trench measured by the sounder in 1951 – the British called then 10 of 863 meters. A Soviet scientific expedition on the vessel “Vityaz” in 1957, said: 11 022. In January 1960, the bathyscaphe Trieste into the abyss for the first time plunged the people – don Walsh and Jacques Piccard. In March 2012 there – alone! – went to film Director James Cameron.
Widely known and two missions unmanned underwater vehicles in the Mariana trench: the Japanese research probe “Kiko” (1995) and American vehicle “Nereus” (2009). The latter recorded a depth of 10 902 meters, shot video, took some photographs and collected samples of sediment on the bottom.
So what is the Russian know-how? As explained “RG” in the Foundation for advanced studies, the above mentioned devices have been associated with providing their vessels with fiber-optic cable. It has remained essentially vehicles remote-controlled – “tethered” to the vehicle, and it dramatically limits their ability and limits the range of the actual cable length. Developed in CDB “Rubin” (St.-Petersburg) AUV Vityaz “-D” is a fully Autonomous maneuvering apparatus for ultra deep diving. Contact with the ship security and deep-water benthic station he only channels hydroacoustic communication – no wires.
About the beginning stages of this project, we talked in detail. Then “Ruby” together with the DRF was organized by the Laboratory of marine robotic systems. Posed a very specific task – to create marine robotic system for performing ultra-deepwater dives and conducting unique scientific studies in deep ocean areas, including areas previously inaccessible to man.
the Customer was the Foundation for advanced studies. The curator of this project from FPI Victor Litvinenko said: “the project features includes the ability to dive to 12 thousand meters. We understand that the official depth of the Mariana trench a few less, but there is unexplored area. For example, “the slick Challenger”, in which nobody was diving and what depth is not known. To such a depth sank only a few people, and large-scale studies are not conducted by any one country. We want to explore the area around the place of descent of the apparatus within a radius of 150 kilometers.”
He maneuvering device is a permeable design of zero buoyancy, of its power base made of titanium alloys. External contour – of spheroplastics, it compensates for the excess weight of the unit and gives it a streamlined shape. The movement of ANPA provides four main and ten underrolevushka motors.
Vityaz”-D” armed with a sonar, sonar navigation and communication sonars side-viewing, has external video cameras, lighting and special research equipment. All together allows to produce at depths of up to 12 kilometers surveillance and search and bathymetric survey of the area, sampling to study the structure of the upper layer of bottom soil, the sonar survey of the bottom topography and to perform measurements of hydrophysical parameters of the marine environment.
in Addition to the maneuvering AUV, the complex includes deep-sea bottom station and instrument control. Shipborne equipment of the complex provides an information exchange on the vessel carrier with an underwater camera and a ground station in real time on the hydroacoustic channel. The complex consists entirely of components manufactured in Russia.
But why need mobile AUV deep-sea bottom station? As explained by its developers in “Ruby”, the GDS performs the role of the underwater base station – a device in standalone mode installs with it on the hydroacoustic channel and adjusts its location. In addition a ground station is able to broadcast on AUV control commands from the vessel carrier. In cooperation c St. Petersburg “ruby” for this project worked with the Institute of GidroMash “Calm”, the State scientific center of Central research Institute of robotics and technical Cybernetics, Institute of marine technology problems far Eastern branch Russian Academy of Sciences and other organizations.
