enabling technologies

Important enabling technologies include:

• navigation (especially inertial navigation systems) and collision avoidance (both the sensors and the logic)

• long range acoustic telemetry: low bandwidth for supervisory control of the missions, and a high bandwidth for data transfer to surface (including CCTV)

• power: batteries and fuel cells

• materials: high strength/low density materials, together with novel structural design techniques, to provide great depth capability with minimum weight penalty