Multi-vehicle oceanographic feature exploration

Abstract

Oceanographic features such as jets and vortices are often found downstream of obstacles and landforms such as islands or peninsulas. Such features have high spatial and temporal variability and are, hence, interesting but difficult to measure and quantify. This paper discusses an experiment to identify and resolve such oceanographic features in Selat Pauh, in the Straits of Singapore. The deployment formation for multiple robotic vehicles (Autonomous Surface Craft - ASC), the measurement instruments, and the algorithms developed in extracting oceanographic field variables are described. These were based on two ocean field predictions from well-known geophysical flow dynamic models. Field experiments were carried out and comparison of the forecasts with measurements was attempted. To investigate an unexpected behaviour of one ASC, hindcasts with wind effects and simulation with vortex feature extraction on a larger domain with more involved bathymetry were also partially carried out.