IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2016 - 32

Atlantic Ocean

South
America

S
o
u

Pacific Ocean

South Pole
t

h

er

McMurdo
Station
n

Black Island

Indian
Ocean

c

e

a

Site E

n

O
National Science Foundation

McMurdo Station

Figure 2. A satellite image of the deployment area in Antarctica. McMurdo Station and the relative deployment location (SIMPLE site E)
can be seen. (Image courtesy of Google and the National Science Foundation.)

Mooring instruments and drop cameras have been successful
in obtaining data from the ice and ocean below [17] but are
limited to providing data for only a single location each deployment. Spatially resolved data for a wide area beneath these
shelves, such as those obtained with an ROV, can improve the
utility of mooring data that provide a long baseline temporal
signal. Such spatially resolved data can also uniquely disclose
how sub-ice and seafloor topography influence ocean circulation and the interaction of the ice with the ocean.
As mentioned above, the development of ROVs and
AUVs during the past few decades has led to advances that
enable the exploration of hazardous and extreme environments, such as that found beneath the Antarctic ice
shelves. But one of the main challenges preventing further
use of these vehicles is difficulty with navigation and localization, due to the lack of access to a global positioning
system (GPS) or compass so far beneath the ice and close
to the magnetic poles. However, a few AUVs and ROVs
recently have been developed specifically for such polar
sub-ice oceanic exploration.
A broad set of platforms have contributed to polar sub-ice
missions. Long-range vehicles include seaBED-class AUVs
such as Seabed, Jaguar, and Puma (2 × 1.5 × 0.5 m and
approximately 250 kg) [20], [14] that have been used to evaluate conditions under sea ice at both poles; Autosub (7 m
long and 3,266 kg), which explored beneath the Pine Island
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IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

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DECEMBER 2016

Glacier tongue [6]; ALTEX (2.5-6.4 m long and 53-cm diameter), which deployed in the Norwegian Arctic [8]; the AUV
Endurance (1.2-m circular shape and 1089 kg), which
deployed in subglacial Lake Bonney, Antarctica [9]; and
the Nereid under-ice (NUI) vehicle [5] (1.8 × 1.8 × 3 m and
1,800 kg), which was deployed in sea ice from a ship in the
Arctic in 2014. ARTEMIS (designed following that of Endurance) was also recently deployed as part of the SIMPLE program during austral summer 2015, beneath the McMurdo Ice
Shelf and surrounding sea ice [16].
The aforementioned AUV and ROV platforms maintain
long-range traverse capabilities with a variety of scientific sensors. However, they also have significant logistical limitation;
most require deployment via gantry or vessel-based lift systems with large teams and heavy equipment, usually off the
side of a ship in the open ocean. Because the majority of large
vehicles cannot be deployed directly through the ice, they are
deployed from open water or at ice front and traverse many
kilometers from the entry point to targets beneath the ice, limiting penetration range beneath the shelves (Figure 3). Most
small under-ice vehicles, including Seagliders [4] and the Bluefin AUV [12], are also deployed and recovered from ships. But
gliders have difficulty dealing with rapid changes in current
and bathymetric conditions, limiting their use at the poles.
To overcome some of these limitations and define a unique
technical capability, Icefin was designed for deployment
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