AUV in Search for Archaeological Sites

The Danish underwater vehicle MARTIN from Maridan A/S has been chosen in the first EU-tender ever for AUVs. MARTIN will be used for Marine Archaeological Reconnaissance and Site Mapping (MARES) in a development project conducted by the National Museum's Centre for Maritime Archaeology. The aim of the project is to demonstrate the feasibility of an AUV in maritime archaeology.

"We need to find new standards and methods to determine what exactly is there as efficiently and fast as possible," says Fred Hocker, who is head of the NMF division responsible for developing new technology for maritime archaeology. "All our previous MARES surveys have been either with divers or towed fish. What really makes MARTIN significant for us is the fact that you can tell the vehicle to steer a straight course a meter above the seabed. You can programme the AUV to steer parallel courses close together - let's say two meters apart - which is something you cannot do with a tow fish with any reliability. Using MARTIN we thus expect to detect many types of underwater archaeological sites exposed on or buried in the seafloor, some of which could not be found with conventional methods.
According to Fred Hocker, the Centre for Maritime Archaeology is currently analyzing what kind of instrumentation they want to put on MARTIN and how exactly they are going to test it. "Two primary components of the instrument payload will be a side-scanning sonar and a sub-bottom profiling sonar. A third instrument is not yet finalised, but will be either a digital still or digital video camera for making a visual record of a site."

More information: Maridan A/S, Jesper Peter Baunsgaard

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