An underwater robot yields new clues regarding Antarctic sea ice. The robot is providing essential and intriguing clues for scientists from the US, UK and Australia, who indicate that the new technology indicates more accurate measurements of the ice  thickness, which were too difficult to access before.

Although satellite observations are able to measure large-scale ice thickness from space, snow cover on the ice can make accurate data interpretation difficult. Now SeaBED, an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), helps to bridge the gap between difficulties in accurately measuring the ice thickness.

Unlike the majority of oceanographic survey instruments, which look down towards the seafloor, SeaBED contains an upward-looking sonar that helps measure and map the underside of sea ice floes. The robot’s twin-hull design also gives it better stability for low-speed photographic surveys.

SeaBED dove down to a depth of 20 to 30 meters and was driven around in a lawnmower pattern to collect data. The lines of data collected on the dive were then merged to form high-resolution 3D bathymetric surveys from underneath the ice.

Co-author of the study, Dr. Guy Williams from the Institute of Antarctic and Marine Studies, said in a statement, “The full 3-D topography of the underside of the ice provides a richness of new information about the structure of sea ice and the processes that created it. This is key to advancing our models particularly in showing the differences between Arctic and Antarctic sea ice.”

According to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, SeaBED, developed by WHOI scientist Hanumant Singh and colleagues, can fly slowly or hover over the seafloor to depths of 6,000 feet (2,000 meters), making it particularly suited to collect highly detailed sonar and optical images of the seafloor.