These modifications were required to meet the final engineering objectives developed during the final design of the vehicle system. During the vehicle design phase, we determined that we could fabricate three vehicles, with extended capabilities, and still remain within our proposed budget. One vehicle will be equipped with conductivity, pressure, temperature, and optical backscatter sensors, the others will not have any sensors except depth. Additional sensors may be added to these vehicles at a later date. As of 26 September, we are approximately six weeks from the completion of the vehicle.
All essential parts are now in house.
The remaining tasks which we need to accomplish to complete the year one effort are to complete the fabrication of the vehicles and to test one. We hope to complete this effort before 1 December 1994. The final vehicle design is far more sophisticated than we originally envisioned. It contains a high resolution DSP based tracking array for inter-transponder navigation and an arbitrary transmitter board which permits the vehicle to produce broad band coded pings for communication and tracking.