Collaborative Autosub Science in Extreme Environments Masterclass in Auv Technology for Polar Science

There is increasing interest from the marine science community in using autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) under ice shelves and under sea ice. These environments pose challenges to the vehicle and support team, and they mean that recovery may be almost impossible, or very expensive, should the vehicle develop a fault particularly when beneath ice. This paper reviews recent published work on AUV reliability and develops a risk management process (RMP-AUV) tuned to the needs of the responsible owner working with a technical support team. The RMP-AUV provides a framework for the responsible owner to determine an acceptable risk using mainly objective information, augmented with subjective judgement on the priority of the proposed vehicle campaigns. A process is defined whereby the technical team determines the probability of loss based on the most applicable historic data for the vehicle. If this is less than the risk acceptable to the owner, RMP-AUV then requires this assessment to be verified, for example through a proving campaign. How a campaign can be designed to meet this objective is discussed and other risk mitigation strategies are outlined. Worked examples are included to illustrate the how the proposed RMP-AUV would work, using actual reliability data from the Autosub AUV. We are some way from having sufficiently reliable (or sufficiently inexpensive) AUVs that the task of risk assessment in polar environments becomes trivial. Until that time careful performance and risk assessments will be needed. Furthermore, those assessments should be used to drive forward improvements in AUV reliability so that the full potential of autonomous systems to deliver data from the polar regions can be realised.