Submersibles--Data processing

The rapid increase in the amount of data gathered by Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) leads to a global data management issue. Indeed, this large data collection effort is only interesting if the data collected can be easily retrieved and analyzed by many researchers. The main contribution of this thesis is the design of data management and retrieval schemes useful to the whole AUV community that both simplify the access and treatment of the data collected. This is achieved by the use of a self-describing standard data format (Hierarchical Data Format) and the use of Internet browsers' file download ability. Recent developments in Sun's Java applet technology have been used to provide a user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) so that the user can select data files according to a large number of parameters (what variables have been collected, when and where).

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) collect a large volume of scientific data in every mission, using the onboard sensors, and store them in log files. The accessibility of these data is limited. Specific tools are required to extract the data to be processed on the user workstation with the installed analysis tools and scripts. The objective is to standardize and simplify the way data can be retrieved and processed from anywhere by anybody. The design of a server that manages the access to the data and to the applications that process them has been considered. Everything can then be done through the use of a single Java client executed on any Java compliant computer. Analysis tools are downloaded on the fly when needed and do not require any installation. New tools can be integrated into the application server in the form of plugins developed with an appropriate Java Library.