Improving path-planning for glider operations: A current-forecast based
approach applied in the Gulf of St. Lawrence
Abstract
Ocean gliders are a key platform that can fill the gaps between coastal
and open ocean observing systems, between Argo floats, and moorings and
ship-based strategies (Testor et al., 2019). One challenge for these
slow-moving, primarily underwater systems, is to improve waypoint-based
navigation to minimize the effects of wind and current driven dynamics.
This is important in time-critical applications where there are
advantages in reaching a site as quickly as possible, for example when
monitoring storm systems or tracking eddies. Optimal path planning will
also be important in long duration missions where battery consumption is
a limiting factor of the deployment. In August 2019, a Slocum glider was
deployed in the Gulf of St. Lawrence for preliminary system studies.
During the deployment, a waypoint planning system was used to generate
the glider waypoints list files. In this presentation, we will present
the design of the path-planning system and show in-situ scientific
measurements collected by the glider. The key optimized value assigned
to enable path planning are minimizing current speeds and the key metric
for validating the performance is the distance covered per hour. This
approach has tremendous value for improving the autonomy of gliders in
operational ocean monitoring applications, removing pressure from pilots
managing the glider mission and improving the state-of-the-art of ocean
data products.