TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Ground/Sea Vehicles, Sensors, Battlespace

ACQUISITION PROGRAM: Oceanographer of the Navy, PMS-NSW, PMS-403, PMS-485, and PMS-495

OBJECTIVE: Design and develop a self deployable, compact, energy harvesting system capable of extracting hydrodynamic flow energy from the littorals, surf zones, and rivers for unmanned system propulsion or for sensor operations. The system shall be easily integratable as a module to a number of existing underwater deployed sensors and unmanned underwater vehicles.

DESCRIPTION: Underwater sensors and autonomous systems are often significantly limited by the availability of onboard energy. The issue of energy limitation becomes more severe for autonomous systems deployed in the littorals, in surf zones, and in rivers due to the difficulties of deploying and retrieving systems in such energetic environments to replace batteries. The abundant hydrodynamic energy in such environments might, however, be extracted for use by deployed systems. Available autonomous system capabilities would be significantly enhanced by innovative approaches to self-deployment and energy extraction from the environment. In particular, system endurance, reduced cost, and potentially higher power for onboard sensor systems could be made available by in situ energy harvesting. Concepts and capabilities are solicited that would provide a system capable of self deployment and extraction of flow energy in the littorals, surf zones, and rivers with power level sufficient for reliable operations of typical sensors and systems deployed in such environments for surveillance and environmental monitoring.

PHASE I: Specific design concepts of energy extraction, self-deployment, power generation, and interface to existing underwater systems to achieve the objective requirements should be proposed along with an integrated system design. Component level and system level modeling and analyses are to be conducted to justify the proposed design and system integration. The design analyses should focus on feasibility of any new proposed concept of component and integration for higher overall system performance particularly in various adverse environmental conditions such as storms or river flooding. Risk analysis in both component and system levels are to be conducted to identify high risk subsystems and appropriate risk mitigation strategies are to be developed for Phase II.

PHASE II: A prototype will be produced and fully demonstrated in Phase II. Test and analysis will document the energy harvesting system performance with respect to the stated objectives as well as performance limitations in laboratory and in near shores and in rivers. In addition to operational performance issues, the Phase II efforts should address issues such as reliability, manufacturability, and toughness in severe environmental conditions.

PHASE III: Proposer will develop an acquisition-ready energy harvesting system description that meets well defined operation guidelines. Full manufacturing documentation will allow rapid production to occur with the vendor team.

PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL/DUAL-USE APPLICATIONS: Commercial production and distribution of self-deployed energy harvesting system parallels Navy interests. Primary applications in the near-term will address environmental baselining, monitoring, and change detection seasonally and in response to incremental or episodic events. Communities, ports, and resource management entities are likely the first customers, and their requirements for endurance, affordability, and maintainability will be similar to the Navy requirements.

REFERENCES:
1) The Navy Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (AUV) Master Plan, 2004: (http://www.navy.mil/navydata/technology/uuvmp.pdf)

2) Autonomous Vehicles in Support of Naval Operations: Naval Studies Board, National Academies Press, 2005: (http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11379)

3) C. von Alt, and J.F. Grassle, "LEO-15 � an unmanned long-term environmental observatory," MTS/IEEE OCEANS �92 Proceedings, pp. 849-854, 1992.

4) Glenn, S.M., Schofield, O.M., Chant, R., Kohut, J., McDonnell, J., McLean, S.D., 2006. The Leo-15 coastal cabled observatory-phase II for the next evolutionary decade of oceanography. SSC06- Scientific Submarine Cable 2006.

KEYWORDS: energy harvesting; unmanned underwater vehicle; underwater sensor; extraction; hydrodynamic energy; self-deployed

** TOPIC AUTHOR (TPOC) **

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