RIO ROSO a Robotically Installed and Online Remote Ocean Seafloor Observatory

We describe a system for ocean observatories which streams data from the seafloor to shore in near real-time without a cable or moored surface buoy. The system utilizes a Wave Glider ® (Liquid Robotics, Inc.); an autonomous surfboard-sized maritime vehicle that harvests wave energy for propulsion and solar energy for electrical power. The Wave Glider acts as a communications gateway as it hovers on the surface above the observatory connecting the acoustic telemetry through the ocean column and satellite telemetry to the shore. Several deployments of a prototype system demonstrated the feasibility of this concept. We also demonstrated that a wave glider could tow a suitably designed ocean bottom package with acceptable loss of speed. In this paper, we describe such a system that can be deployed autonomously and provide real-time telemetry of data from seafloor sensors.