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If You Happen to Find One of Lost Undersea Robots, Please Call Navy

Posted by Morli on June 11, 2010 at 5:43pm

Comms problems can happen to 100k$ drones too , even Navy has to face such losses. So choose well.

Undersea-Drones.jpg


The Navy lost four submersible unmanned drones over the weekend in the Chesapeake Bay near Norfolk, Va., and is asking the public for help in finding the errant torpedo shaped drones.

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Comments

  • Bill Porter June 12, 2010 at 10:56am
    "They are designed and built to diff quality control/reliability specs... and their cost differs accordingly. "

    This is exactly what I was trying to elude to in my post. Compare the numbers of would be DIY drones lost under these circumstances to the very low numbers of federal drones actually lost and suddenly 4 seems like a rather low number. There's no amount of money that can buy 100% reliability.
  • Moderator
    Sgt Ric June 12, 2010 at 10:44am
    Somebody is taking this thread waaay too serious!

    Actually, it's unfair to compare the issues we have with our DIY craft to these government UAS vehicles.
    They are designed and built to diff quality control/reliability specs... and their cost differs accordingly.
  • Bill Porter June 12, 2010 at 10:22am
    Thankfully in our country you have the right to voice your opinion all you want. However, your comments that some simple failsafe like a "track-me' device could have changed what happened are extremely offensive to the countless engineers that have dedicated their lives to the design of these systems; just because you pay taxes doesn't excuse you from that. You have no knowledge of the design of these systems, nor what failsafes are already used to stop just this from happening.

    To make this post more informative:

    There is an old adage for sailors: Don't put anything over the side of your boat that you can't afford to lose. The risk of losing these robots is always present, and there's always engineers somewhere working on better failsafe systems because of that danger. Actually, the track record of modern UUVs has been really good. Almost all that were lost were found again, thanks to the countless failsafes and backups designed into the system.

    Think about all the times your robot/drone has had an issue, whether errant behavior, bug in new code, or poorly planed mission resulting in heading for trees. Now take away the power to stop it and manually control it. Heck, even blindfold yourself so you can't even watch it, to see if it's in trouble. That is what the engineers who work with these robots have to deal with. How many drones would you have lost?
    http://happening.To/
  • Lew Payne June 12, 2010 at 10:01am
    I found one floating in my bathtub this morning !
  • Admin
    Morli June 12, 2010 at 2:55am
    4 in a row ?!!! that must be big " little Poop". So who picks the tab ? Coz the guy who picks the tab gets to say any IMHO.
  • ionut June 12, 2010 at 1:13am
    Aliens kidnapped them.Poor subs.
  • Lew Payne June 11, 2010 at 11:27pm
    "So pretty much, these guys have all bases covered as far as they whole not getting lost thing. You gotta give us government engineers some credit, we can think (and already have) of failsafe systems too you know. It's kind of an insult to hear people just start spinning ideas on what 'we should have done' to make the system any more less lose-able." - Bill Porter

    Welcome to the real world... the world of the ignorant masses. Next, Oprah will be talking about this and Jerry Springer will be inviting you on his show to argue with conspiracy theorists who think a UFO made them go off track.
  • A. Rafael Ptacnik June 11, 2010 at 10:39pm
    they must be frightened... poor things
  • Chris Johnson June 11, 2010 at 10:39pm
    @Bill Porter
    I hear you there. I work on a "for The Man" UAS program, and we do actually put some thought into robustness of design. Somethings you can't predict and "poop happens" even to the big buck operations.
  • Bill Porter June 11, 2010 at 10:22pm
    Well, let me clear up a few questions. I work for the navy, with, you guessed it, that same type of under water robots that were lost. While I wasn't in VA for this exercise(got pulled off at the last second), my coworkers are. Thankfully these were not our robots, as they were operating in the same area.

    It is very hard to lose one of these guys under normal circumstances. They are positively buoyant, so if all else crashes, they float to the surface. They have acoustic modems, that respond to location pings and allow the operator to hunt them down by range requests. The little orange antenna on top is a wifi antenna, so if your in a few clicks and it's on the surface, you can get gps coordinates. There's also a strobe light.

    So pretty much, these guys have all bases covered as far as they whole not getting lost thing. You gotta give us government engineers some credit, we can think (and already have) of failsafe systems too you know. It's kind of an insult to hear people just start spinning ideas on what 'we should have done' to make the system any more less lose-able.

    So what did happen? Well, since I can't find any public new source that explains, I'm going to hold off as well; for the navy might be holding it back for some reason. I will elude to this however, if it's not the system itself, there's only one other part of the equation to blame.

    And I'd be surprised if they ever find those poor robots.
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