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The bay is perfect environment with shallow water, varied features on the bottom and commercial traffic, Egan said. At times, however, the engineers have to contend with interference from pleasure boaters, including one man who was approached by a Navy vessel after trying to grab a vehicle near the surface. "We've had occasional interactions where a boat operator sees an opportunity to maybe snap up a cool device," Egan said. "We've had to deter them on occasion." The Navy has used unmanned vehicles to simulate enemy submarines for training purposes since the 1970s, but officials say they have made dramatic leaps in autonomy. The vehicle that completed the 26-hour voyage from Cape Cod to Newport in October 2010, for example, plotted its own course without relying on GPS positioning or other communications, Egan said. Guiding itself by features on the sea floor, it passed through the pylons of a bridge, circumnavigated the island of Jamestown and surfaced in a pre-determined spot inside the harbor. The laboratory at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, which has 65 engineers and scientists dedicated to UUVs, works closely with private companies, academic institutions and other government agencies involved in similar research. The gadgets have a wide range of applications beyond the military, as demonstrated last year by vehicles that recovered the flight data recorder from an Air France plane that crashed in the mid-Atlantic. The submarine community is particularly eager to see what the vehicles can do. Electric Boat in Groton, Conn., has designed a module to help future attack subs deploy and recover the drones, transporting them through the payload tubes. "If you can do reconnaissance with multiple UUVs or one UUV, then in effect you extend the area the submarine touches," Friedman said.
[Associated
Press;
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