Skip to main content
European Commission logo print header

Bringing together Research and Industry for the Development of Glider Environmental Services

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - BRIDGES (Bringing together Research and Industry for the Development of Glider Environmental Services)

Reporting period: 2018-03-01 to 2019-08-31

Working towards implementation of the Europe 2020 strategy for sustainable growth in the marine and maritime sectors necessitates the development and application of advanced technology to enable smarter, reliable and more cost-effective methods of operating at-sea. Improved operational capabilities are required such as increased autonomy, working at extreme depths, more sophisticated sensing of the water column, the deep-sea environment and their resources. The expected increase in ocean industrialization generates an immediate need for smarter and safer technology to support long-term exploration and monitoring services of the coastal and deep ocean while controlling the potential impact of these activities on the marine environment.
The BRIDGES project (Bringing together Research and Industry for the Development of Glider Environmental Services) aimed to address this demand by providing a necessary tool for further understanding, improved monitoring, and responsible exploitation of the marine environment while assuring its long-term preservation.
The main objectives of the BRIDGES project were to develop and demonstrate at-sea two new glider prototypes with improved sensing capabilities capable of operating in extreme depths and designed to provide cost-effective services to key marine markets. This was to be achieved by:
• Further improving on existing European glider technology by development of two new glider prototypes, extending operating capabilities to depths of 2,400m (Deep Explorer) and 6,000m (Ultradeep Explorer),
• Enhancing sensing capabilities with novel, sophisticated payloads to demonstrate exploration and monitoring service capabilities for a wide range of science and industry domains,
• Developing on-board and on-shore intelligent management systems to provide a high level of autonomy for gliders and glider fleets,
• Standardisation of glider data and hardware to facilitate the exploitation and commercialisation of the platform and resulting data products, including integration into national, regional and global observing systems.
During the third and final period of the BRIDGES project, Work Package 4 successfully delivered the completed DXP and UXP glider prototypes, ready for at-sea testing in WP8 (Milestone 14).

A key highlight was successfully achieving an interchangeable, modular design for the DXP and UXP prototypes. The two prototypes are essentially the same vehicle, the only exceptions being the internal pressure hull (aluminium or titanium), external wet hull (additional syntactic foam for UXP) and the hydraulic ballast system (2,500m or 6,000m rated). Design requirements of WP2 were also met, reducing to a minimum the overall size and weight of the prototypes, resulting in safer handling and operations at-sea whilst still providing maximum sensor payload capabilities and mission endurance.

The successful delivery and validation of key subsystems such as the battery system, safety burn-wire dropweight, and new control software will also impact other underwater platforms produced by ALSEAMAR. The existing SeaExplorer glider will also benefit from these upgraded subsystems, improving capabilities and reliability of the conventional glider.

The DXP and UXP prototypes were successfully built, and the vehicle’s electronics chassis, communication and control subsystems and firmware were fully integrated and working with the pressure hull installed in the fairing. The subsystems were shown to operate within acceptable limits during SAT testing, and could be adjusted and tuned to facilitate the desired glider flight during the course of the first dives.
The DXP prototype was taken to sea and successfully completed a total of six missions to demonstrate the functioning of the vehicle i.e. diving, climbing and horizontal motion under full control of the glider firmware. The at-sea operations successfully demonstrated the capabilities of the BRIDGES glider prototypes. The prototypes and results of the demonstrations were presented to industry and public stakeholders during the BRIDGES Industry Workshop held in August 2019. Following the demonstrations, the industrialization phase of both prototypes will require re-calibration and tuning of control systems and validation through further at-sea testing.

Another significant result during this period is the of a new low-power, low-cost Smart Cable Interface that standardises a non-standardised sensor. The Smart Cable Interface builds on the extensive planning and development done in previous European projects (Nexos, CommonSense), implementing the requirements set out for standardising access to sensor data and metadata. This prototype cable has also recently been awarded funding by the Cypriot National Fund for commercialisation.
The ground-breaking nature of BRIDGES is in providing a technology to enable long-term deep-sea monitoring on networked, unoccupied platforms. The long-term networking concept cannot be fully developed by current ROV, AUV and HOV technologies due to economic and/or endurance limitations. For this reason, BRIDGES is further developing underwater gliders to provide a cost-effective, long-term and easily networked capacity to monitor 98% of the world’s oceans.
BRIDGES gliders go beyond the capabilities of current glider technology; being able to operate in extreme pressure environments, hybrid buoyancy and propeller propulsion navigation to facilitate sea-bed and ocean column exploration, and development of service-oriented smart sensing systems targeting industrial applications. The sensing systems are miniaturized, low-power systems suitable for glider operations and include cutting-edge technology for the in-situ analysis of nutrients, acoustic characterization of the sea-bed, and small particle and organism imaging system.
The BRIDGES technology will improve the scientific capacity to observe and understand the deep sea water column and seafloor by obtaining meaningful information on environmental descriptors and processes. With an estimated 5% of the seafloor surveyed, environmental characteristics and resources from abyssal regions have remained largely unknown until now.
The competitiveness of the European Blue Economy will be increased with the development of Deep and Ultradeep Explorers, which will offer a cost-effective capacity for exploration and monitoring to facilitate the sustained exploitation of deep ocean resources. BRIDGES will demonstrate solutions that can be applied to a cost-efficient ecosystem-based management of marine regions that increase industrial competitiveness and help achieve Good Environmental Status of the ecosystem.
Finally, the establishment of a European marine deep glider infrastructure for research and industry will enable the sustainable and safe operations in deep-sea areas all over Europe and the globe. BRIDGES is contributing to this end by further developing the European glider industry through addition of the Deep and Ultradeep Explorers to their current SeaExplorer glider, the first and only commercially-available European glider, as well as further development of glider piloting and data dissemination software and web tools for promoting glider activities.
Project logo in .png
Project logo in .jpg
bridges-glideratsurface.jpg
bridges-2-prototypes.jpeg
bridges-finalga.jpeg
bridges-ultradeep.png
bridges-deep-atsea.jpg