Gliders
- Offering long range and endurance using environmental energy via a thermal engine, the thermal glider can be deployed at a maximal depth of 1200 meters for a period of 5 years. It has a 40,000-km range.
- It's flexible mobility is capable of moving to specific locations and depths and occupying controlled spatial and temporal grids. The glider is able to move both horizontally and vertically.
- The long-range and duration capabilities of Slocum gliders make them ideally suited for subsurface sampling at the regional scale. Carrying a wide variety of sensors, they can be programmed to patrol for weeks at a time, surfacing to transmit their data to shore while downloading new instructions at regular intervals, realizing a substantial cost savings compared to traditional surface ships.
Although thermal gliders have many benefits to using them, they currently put after electric gliders in production and use. They are based on temperature systems in the water and they very from location to locations. Out in the field, of 3 thermal gliders we have used here at Rutgers, 2 went missing and the only successful one that is still used today is the Louis & Clarke glider based in Hawaii.
2. Electric Gliders - Versatile, maneuverable and powered with alkaline batteries, the electric glider can be deployed for a period of 15 to 30 days at a 600- to 1500-km range. Its flexible payload allows it to carry customized sensors. The coastal glider can be operated to depths of 4–200 meters and the 1-km glider to 1000 meters.
These gliders are majorly used, as they're powered on batteries that give us a more reasonable amount of time as to when they will fail and find out a suitable place to recover them and replace the batteries.
RU29 is an electric glider
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