Robotics at the service of the polar science

This picture was taken in the Arctic in May 2018. It shows the unmanned marine vehicle Proteus in front of the tidewater glacier Conwaybreen in the Kongsfjorden in Spitsbergen in the Svalbard Archipelago. The front of tidewater glaciers is an almost vertical wall of ice standing over the sea where direct measurements are very critical due to the possibility of sudden fall of enormous blocks of ice. For this reason there is a lack of environmental data in this areas. The use of Proteus to collect data allowed to increase the understanding of phenomena related to the global climate change, especially ice melting.
PROTEUS was equipped with an autonomous water sampler and with two winches for the management of various sensors. One winch was used to release and recover a cluster of underwater sensors and the other to release and recover an air balloon carrying air quality sensors. With this solution it was possible to obtain a good characterization of the whole marine-air column in the proximity of tidewater glaciers.