International Symposium on Unmanned Untethered Submersible Technology (UUST)

The 18th International Symposium on Unmanned Untethered Submersible Technology (UUST 13) will be conducted on 11-14 August 2013 at the Portsmouth Sheraton Harborside Hotel. Set in the historic seacoast town of Portsmouth, the Sheraton Harborside provides the perfect atmosphere for a relaxed symposium allowing the attendees a chance to meet each other and share Sea Stories as well as gain insight into AUV systems and technology.

Although autonomous undersea vehicles have been around for over a hundred years vehicles (Whitehead torpedoes were developed in 1866), scientists were just awakening to the possibilities of intelligent undersea vehicles enabled by the advances in computer technology in the early eighties. The first conferences concentrated on possible missions and applications appropriate for autonomous underwater vehicles. The attendees primarily were academic researchers.

As the years progressed, the emphasis shifted to exploration of the required technologies, designs for new platforms and increased participation from international organizations. Early platforms were large, expensive and primarily military in nature. As computing power became available, the cost and size shrunk making the use of AUV’s more available to pursue scientific tasks.

One of the early adopters of the AUV technology in the US was the US Navy. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) became an early sponsor of the conference and funded the development of the required technologies. Early applications of underwater search and survey were envisioned. In the past decade many more US and international organizations have supported a wide spectrum of development.

As the reliability of theses systems and the growing number of applications were recognized, the AUV market expanded attracting industry to investigate the potential of the AUV market. Over the past few years, this recognition has driven the utilization of AUV systems and technology in a number of directions. With advances in a wide variety of related technology, many new application areas have been defined. A market has grown into, by some estimates, a 200 million USD per year marketplace.

AUV’s are now widely available for academic research and commercial AUV applications are proliferating. The UUST meetings have supported the development of AUV systems and technology for over thirty years. The first symposium was held in May 1980, followed by seventeen more meetings: the most recent was held in Portsmouth, at the Sheraton Harborside in 2011. All have attracted participants from throughout the United States and the World, who are engaged in related research and development. Over the years, the international participation has been substantial with one of the meetings having more international submissions than US submissions. More and more authors are presenting results of their experimentations rather than designs in progress. . Advanced research is being reported in areas of autonomy, multiple vehicle cooperation, networking and development of biologically inspired AUV’s . A real hit for current sessions are lessons learned; For example, one group shared that the choice of a white paint scheme was not helpful in an Antarctic environment.

Conference sessions at UUST 13 are planned on the following technical subject areas:

Applications of AUV Technology
Autonomous Manipulation
Bio-engineering
Communications
Distributed Control
Energy
Guidance and Control Systems
Hydrodynamics
Intelligent Systems and Technologies
Modeling & Simulation
Navigation
Operational Systems Experience
Reliability
Sensor Systems and Processing
Underwater Imaging
Launch & Recovery Concepts
Modularity
UUST 13 provides an environment that encourages informal interaction of the participants. This allows an exceptional opportunity for networking with a spectrum of individuals involved in all aspects of AUV systems and technologies from basic research to operations to product development and marketing.

The meeting encourages a number of student activities. The major activity is a student paper competition where the winners have all of their expense paid to attend the meeting and receive a substantial cash prize for their efforts

Attendance is limited to ensure a convivial atmosphere. Register early and participate. Further details on the symposium are available at www.uust.org