Hi, we are using 2 T200 motors with our Barracuda AUV which we manufacture. I am wondering if Blue Robotics has any data on the frequency and intensity of motor and prop noise in the water? The reason I ask is that we have an application that would require the vehicle to be in the water with marine mammals and we obviously don’t want to spook them with motor noises. If you have data regarding the motor noise could you provide it here? If not, we’ll need to do our own testing. Thank you.
Hi @lunarminer
I’ve been testing a Hydrophone from Acbotics, and have seen this spectrogram when driving around with a BlueBoat. While this is a different prop than you may be using, the frequencies should at least be similar.
It’s worth noting that if your AUV is particularly low-drag, it would benefit from ditching the thruster nozzles! These maximize force, but at the expense of drag, and so for low drag vehicles that cruise at high speeds (1 m/s +, vs. an ROV) they are likely slowing you down!
From riding around on a T500 based DPV, the noise doesn’t seem to bother dolphins (see first video), and the electrical signals in the water may even tend to attract sharks?
Thank you very much for the information. That helps a lot.
We have tried the vehicle with a couple of different motors but we have not tried it with the M200. We do have a pair of those and so will do a comparison. The vehicle has been able to achieve about 6 knots but most of the time we don’t need to move that fast.