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The analogies between space and deep sea motivated the German Helmholtz Association to setup the joint research program ROBEX (ROBotic Exploration under eXtreme conditions). The programme objectives are to identify, develop and verify technological synergies between the robotic exploration of the Moon and of the deep sea. In both space and deep sea research orbiters and AUVs/gliders respectively provide a large set of information on the environment but landers and mobile robots are essential to ground truth the data and validate theories. Within ROBEX the mobility of robots is a vital element for research missions due to valuable science return potential from different sites as opposed to static landers. After 2.5 years of project-time three main mobile systems are prepared for demonstrationmissions, one wheel-based system for planetary missions, one wheel based system for extended deep-sea missions and a caterpillar system for high resolution investigation of small surface regions in the deep sea. In all cases sufficient onboard intelligence was needed. The mobile robots should also be capable of return to a central station for recharging, with the station equipped with enough battery power to allow multiple missions. The intelligent seafloor robot "iCrawler" is presented here, which is based on a tele-operated robot, which has been successfully used within the ONC (Ocean Networks Canada) cabled observatory project since 2010. Keywords-seafloor monitoring, mobile robots, ROBEX project978-1-4799-8736-8/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE

Underwater gliders have been conceived more than 20 years ago and as they are building up on concepts and technologies that were developed used for ARGO float systems have reached a maturity that give them a specific role in observing programs [Barker]. Why then starting a new design? It is exactly the success of the current glider systems that lead to revisiting the basic design and exploring alternative vehicle concepts. Current glider designs are suffering from limited scientific payload capacity which is a good motivation in its own right. Furthermore employing more energy efficient, low drag designs would vastly extend the application range. With the MOTH design study we were picking up a concept that is now extensively used in unmanned flight vehicles (drones), the blended wing design. Earlier attempts in that direction have proven to be quite successful [Jenkins]. In particular higher horizontal speeds could be reached and with the blended wing shape offering new payload capabilities other sensor types (sonar systems) will be integrated. Making use of pre-existing knowledge and experience the project will be structured along the lines of a systems engineering approach. The scientific rationale is based on the needs of quantifying the particle flux in the upper part of the water column in regions of interest, like the Northwest African margin. Here MARUM has already a long term record of flux studies so that the anticipated glider missions can be validated against this data set. The scientific payload is defined based on this observation scenario which implies small flight angles and higher horizontal speeds (up to 1 kn). The endurance will lies in the range of days to a few weeks so that typical the glider system will be deployed and recovered during a single cruise. A particular emphasis will be given to assessing and enhancing the operational reliability of the system. This includes both the hardware and the software side of the system which implies that well defined testing procedures have to be described. During field tests it is planned to make use of the WAVEGLIDER (Liquid Robotics) that offers unique opportunities to track the trajectory of the glider and to set up a communication link. In this presentation the basic system design will be presented to illustrate on how to make best use of the hull shape by employing new sensor integration concepts. Fabrication aspects together with a first sketch on the control architecture will be addressed as well.

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