Sampling sea surfaces with SESAMO: an autonomous craft for the study of sea-air interactions.

The sea surface autonomous modular unit (SESAMO) catamaran was satisfactorily exploited for sampling the sea-surface microlayer and immediate subsurface in the Terra Nova Bay area of the Ross Sea during the XIX Italian expedition to Antarctica in January–February 2004. The SESAMO prototype robot, designed to collect data and samples for the study of the sea-air interface, is the result of the synergy between the robotics group of Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche–Istituto di Studi sui Sistemi Intelligenti per l”Automazione (CNR-ISSIA), Genoa branch, and the scientific end users of Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche–Istituto per la Dinamica dei Processi Ambientali (CNR-IDPA, or Institute for the Dynamics of Environmental Processes) in the framework of a project of the Italian National Program of Research in Antarctica (PNRA). At sea, operations showed that a relatively simple robot could satisfactorily work in a natural, outdoor environment, dramatically facilitating the job of the human operator.