• Question: Can you see, in the future of the AUV industry, that they could be used to rescue people that have been lost in stormy seas where risking the lives of a helicopter or rescue boat crew could be too dangerous

    Asked by Jimbob123x to Ollie on 5 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Ollie Morris

      Ollie Morris answered on 5 Mar 2017:

      Good Question!!
      Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) spend most of their time underwater like submarines. AUVs are therefore very unlikely to be used to rescue people, even looking to the future. AUVs are however used to locate things that have already sunk in the sea, so they would be able to find ship wrecks or aircraft that has crashed into the sea and sunk.

      There are fast developing Autonomous surface vessels (ASVs) which come in a variety of sizes that are remotely controlled ships. I don’t think these would be used instead of RNLI rescue boats or Search and Rescue Helicopters in the near future at least. Where people need rescuing in stormy conditions they will normally need first aid and potentially hospital care through injuries or getting too cold in the water (hypothermia). For this reason I think people will always have to go to help to give the medical care needed and make decisions on what is safe to do.

      The future of ASV may mean that people don’t have to crew ships like they do today, making all ships big robots. This could mean the they wouldn’t have to send out rescue operations in dangerous conditions.

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