Mapping the Moon: Using a lightweight AUV to survey the site of the 17th century ship ‘La Lune’

Author

Gracias, N. ; Ridao, Pere ; Garcia, Raul ; Escartin, J. ; L´Hour, Michel ; Cibecchini, Franca ; Campos, Rui ; Carreras, Marc ; Ribas, David ; Palomeras, Narcis ; Magi, Lluis ; Palomer, Albert ; Nicosevici, Tudor ; Prados, Ricard ; Hegedus, Ramon ; Neumann

Author_Institution

Comput. Vision & Robot. Group, Univ. of Girona, Girona, Spain

fYear

2013

fDate

10-14 June 2013

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

8

Abstract

This paper describes the use of a research-driven, highly reconfigurable autonomous underwater vehicle for surveying the site of the historical shipwreck of La Lune. This wreck, from the XVII century, lies in 90m of water near the coast of Toulon in France. The goal of this survey was to create a fast but detailed map of the site, to serve as a base map for subsequent archaeological intervention. The paper overviews the survey setup and the methods used to generate a high resolution optical map. It also highlights some of the important advantages that lightweight AUVs present for archaeological survey missions in terms of operational costs, survey time, the quality of both the acquired data and the mapping outcome, and access to deep sites that are not reachable by traditional archaeological methods.

Keywords

autonomous underwater vehicles; bathymetry; La Lune; archaeological survey missions; autonomous underwater vehicle; high resolution optical map; historical shipwreck; lightweight AUV; operational costs; survey setup; survey time; Cameras; Marine vehicles; Navigation; Optical imaging; Optical sensors; Vehicles;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

OCEANS - Bergen, 2013 MTS/IEEE

Conference_Location

Bergen

Print_ISBN

978-1-4799-0000-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/OCEANS-Bergen.2013.6608142

Filename

6608142