Making Underwater Gliders Useful to Navy Operations

The investigators goal is to develop the capabilities of autonomous underwater gliders to be maintained and piloted at sea for periods of several months and to exploit this capability to address fundamental questions in ocean science. Underwater gliders are progressing from a developing technology to an operational tool. A major challenge now is to determine what tasks gliders are most suited to perform, a determination that is important to naval operation and to research applications. Our objective is to quantify the capabilities of the Spray underwater glider in the field in both Navy and research applications.