Recently, the polar exploration ship “Snow Dragon 2” completed China’s 39th Antarctic exploration mission and returned to its base dock located at the Pudong, Shanghai. The “Snow Dragon 2” has completed all its scientific investigations of polar ice, snow environments and the ocean survey. During this expedition, the drone in configuration of hexa-rotors able to work at the low-temperature developed by Associate professor Zhaoyu Wei has played an important role in assisting the “Snow Dragon 2” to recover the deep-sea submersible/buoy, saving about 70% of the time, as compared to traditional recovery way. This drone assisted submarine buoy and floaty buoy recovery has greatly improved the efficiency and operation capability during the polar expedition, which was also the first time the heavy load drone was used for innovative operations in China’s polar exploration mission.

Submarine buoys and float buoys are very important setups for ocean monitoring and survey, which can record the underwater environment data and collect various underwater signals. However, the recovery of submersible buoys and float buoys is significant challenging. The traditional recovery always uses small boats, which is time-consuming and laborious, and the operation is usually forced to terminate in harsh sea conditions. Moreover, lifting and retrieving small boats in bad sea environment poses a huge threat to the safety of crew members.

In order to solve the problem of safe and quickly recovery of submersible buoys and float buoys in harsh sea conditions, Associate professor Zhaoyu Wei, has developed the heavy-load drone in configuration of hexa-rotors in collaboration with Polar Research Institute of China Polar Research Institute of China. To improve the capability of the drone working in the low temperature environments, Associate professor Zhaoyu Wei has solved some technical difficulties such as wind resistance, rain resistance, low temperature resistance, and GPS unstable positioning at high latitudes in harsh sea conditions. The drone is able to assist “Snow Dragon 2” in the sea conditions of level 5 wind and level 3 waves. During the typical operation, the drone can pull and drop hooks and cables, and cooperate with the winch system on the ship’s side to complete the recovery of the submersible buoys and float buoys. The drone can work in the low temperature condition for more than 30 minutes to recover the buoys, and every recovery operation just takes about 6 minutes, which can save nearly 2 hours as compared to traditional recycling methods. In, addition, it is safe, efficient, and is able to greatly improve the operation efficiency and reducing crew safety risks.

It is reported that the way of buoys recovery in the assist of drones proposed by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Polar Research Institute of China Polar Research Institute of China is expected to be a new, safe and efficient standardized operation which can be referred by other scientific research ships in China in the future.