A geofenced autonomous aquatic drone for repelling sharks from a shoreline. The drone employs a buoyant housing resembling a portion of a predator such as an orca whale. A battery positioned within the drone is recharged through a floating inductive charging station. A transmitter unit coupled to at least one under water transducer introduces certain sounds, such as reproduction of orca whale or dolphin calling sounds. A propulsion system controlled a microprocessor receives location information via DGPS for providing a geofence around an area to be patrolled. The drone travels within the geofence area, monitored by the DGPS receiver, while said transducer produces certain sounds and or a solution of shark repellant is dispensed.

A method for charging a battery set of an autonomous vehicle including: determining charging requirements of the battery set of the autonomous vehicle via a communication from the autonomous vehicle to a charging station, in response to the communication from the autonomous vehicle, connecting a plurality of batteries of the charging station in a first combination to match the charging requirements of the battery set of the autonomous vehicle; and charging the battery set of the autonomous vehicle using the plurality of batteries of the charging station in the first combination.

Systems and methods are disclosed herein for a charging system. The charging system may be implemented within an independent charging station or within an autonomous vehicle. Boolean charging can be used to obtain the desired charge or discharge voltage for charging an autonomous vehicle at a charging station. By combining a subset of a sequence of batteries arrays that differ in voltage by powers of two in series, where each battery array may include multiple batteries or battery cells, a voltage may be obtained which is equal to the sum of the voltages across each battery array. This voltage may be used in turn to charge additional batteries or battery arrays. The process may be repeated until the desired amount of battery arrays has been charged and the desired voltage has been achieved.

An unmanned vehicle including a vehicle body, propulsion system, maneuvering system, vehicle control system, rack, sensor, and a power supply. The vehicle control may be used to control the unmanned vehicle in combination with the propulsion and the maneuvering system. The rack may include a retractable mount that may move between a down position and an up position. The sensor system may include a plurality of transient object detection sensors. The plurality of transient object detection sensors may include a sensor adapted to detect an item of interest and may provide an item of interest signal to the vehicle control system. The vehicle control system may identify an item of interest classification and may provide a classification signal. The classification signal may be determined by the item of interest classification and may be utilized to avoid detection of the unmanned vehicle by the item of interest.

An AUV support system includes: a surface ship; an underwater station configured to support an AUV which autonomously sails in water; and a cable connecting the surface ship and the underwater station. The cable includes: a first cable portion extending downward from the surface ship through a water surface when the underwater station is suspended in the water by the cable from the surface ship that is in a stop state on the water; a second cable portion extending upward from a lower end portion of the first cable portion when the underwater station is suspended as above; and a third cable portion extending downward from an upper end portion of the second cable portion and connected to the underwater station when the underwater station is suspended as above.

An underwater vehicle having a hovering system using a tube type launcher. The underwater vehicle includes a streamlined body and a hovering system connected to a rear of the streamlined body to generate a kinetic force of the streamlined body. The hovering system includes an extension shaft extended to be connected to the rear, a connection assembly connected to the rear through the extension shaft, and an auxiliary propeller assembly connected to the connection assembly.

A submersible system is provided having a submersible launch vessel that sends instructions from a mission controller to deploy one or more deployable systems for one or more underwater operations. The submersible launch vessel is submerged within a waterbody. A submersible power supply powers the submersible launch vessel and the one or more deployable systems. One or more communication devices is in communication with the mission controller, and the mission controller is located in one of a remote or a local location relative to the submersible launch vessel. The one or more deployable systems, via the one or more communication devices coupled to the submersible launch vessel, are remote controlled by the mission controller to execute the one or more underwater operations. Also, information associated with the one or more underwater operations including telemetry data is transmitted to the mission controller from the submersible launch vessel.

An example system can comprise autonomous submarines and an auxiliary station including a power supply. Each autonomous submarine can include a respective power supply and a respective marine survey node coupled thereto. The auxiliary station can be configured to dock the autonomous submarines in a body of water and recharge the respective power supply of each of the autonomous submarines via the power supply of the auxiliary station. Each autonomous submarine can be configured to autonomously navigate from and return to the auxiliary station and position the respective marine survey node on an underwater surface.

A method for cycling autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that record seismic signals during a marine seismic survey. The method includes deploying plural current AUVs on the ocean bottom; recording the seismic signals during the marine seismic survey with plural current AUVs; releasing from an underwater base a new AUV to replace a corresponding current AUV from the plural current AUVs; recovering the current AUV; and continuing to record the seismic signals with the new AUV.

Disclosed is a method and system to provide aResetting Anchor/Antenna Tether Mechanism (RAATM) to provide, according to an exemplary embodiment, dual anchoring and antenna capabilities to autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). The RAATM is resettable; an AUV can anchor at one location for a period of time, retrieve the anchor, move to a new location, and redeploy the anchor. Furthermore, the RAATM tether may also be used as an antenna for radio communications while deployed; this may allow smaller AUVs to accomplish missions that would otherwise require larger AUVs with dedicated antennas.