Research to operations: Evaluating unmanned surface vehicles

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) employs many technologies in its diverse missions. NOAA challenges include monitoring the atmosphere and predicting the weather, charting the Nation's waterways, protecting marine sanctuaries, managing fisheries resources and exploring and understanding our ocean planet. In an era of strained budgets and declining availability of conventional assets, such as ships, new technologies are required to advance these missions. This paper reviews an initiative of the NOAA Ocean Observations Innovation Forum to systematically evaluate and analyze the value of new technologies, specifically the Wave Glider unmanned surface vehicle (USV), within the agency. In late 2015 the NOAA Ocean Observations Innovation Forum convened a review of the diverse applications of this technology. Working together under a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with Liquid Robotics, the manufacturer of the Wave Glider USV, the forum commenced an evaluation of these experiments in the context of better understanding the challenges of transitioning technology from research to operations. The NOAA outlook and approach to technology transition is based upon various agency policy statements, which vary in their correlation with observed practices in Wave Glider research test and evaluation (RT&E). This effort evaluated the specific tests, trials and evaluations conducted across NOAA. These include National Data Buoy Center (NDBC), Pacific Marine Environmental Lab (PMEL), and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) demonstrations. Experience thus far indicates that USVs, including the Wave Glider, may provide a significant value proposition in many applications. This paper presents observations and then proposes possible steps to expedite the advancement of promising technologies into mission critical applications.