System design of ocean space robots for measurement

The Ocean Space Robot system described here was planned by MITI in April 1971 and have been under development at the Japan Society for The Promotion of Machine Industry. The primary objective of this project is to develop an ocean space measuring system comprised mainly of unmanned vehicles and mooring buoys. This system can measure and analyse multiple parameters in an ocean area by obtaining space distributions and time variations of the parameters in this area. The vehicle is capable of traveling under water at moderate speeds for long distances along the pre-selected trajectory while making measurements and recording them internally. When the vehicle merges from water, the data are telemetered to the land base and stored in the computer there. The role of the mooring buoy is to survey time variations of ocean parameters at its location. Furthermore, the mooring buoy acts to relay between the land base and each vehicle.