Just before Christmas, our colleagues Marc Picheral, researcher from the Villefranche s/Mer marine station of Sorbonne Université and co-authors from all around the world have published the first paper demonstrating the capabilities of the Underwater Vision Profiler (UVP6) and the potential of its use on gliders. Congratulations !
The Underwater Vision Profiler 6: an imaging sensor of particle size spectra and plankton, for autonomous and cabled platforms, https://doi.org/10.1002/lom3.10475
This papers reports a series of experiments to test the UVP6, that will be part of the Bioglider solution.
In the paper, the two following main points are demonstrated :
- It is possible to adapt the Low Power version (UVP6 – LP) on floats and have them run for long experiments,
- The quality of the data gathered with the UVP6 is good as the existing UVP5, and images have even better resolution, despite being the instrument being much smaller (from 35kg to 3,5 kg in the air) and consuming less energy from 15 W to a maximum of 0.8 W).
Here are some pictures taken by UVP6 across the world :
Overall, his paper acknowledges a technic and scientific validation of this technology, which is an important step for Bioglider, and more generally for the overall marine science. Don’t hesitate to visit the Ecotaxa website which gives access to hundreds of millions of images gathered by the UVPs around the world.