ASVs

ASVs, short for autonomous surface vehicles, are unmanned watercraft designed to operate on the surface of water with varying degrees of autonomy. They carry navigation systems, sensors, and communication links to perform pre-programmed missions or respond to changing conditions without direct human control.

Typical sensors include sonar, cameras, chemical and physical probes, GPS, and sometimes radar. Power comes from batteries, solar, or hybrid systems. Autonomy ranges from remotely piloted to fully autonomous operation with collision avoidance, adaptive routing, and return-to-base functionality.

Applications span oceanographic data collection, coastal monitoring, environmental sampling, hydrographic surveying, bathymetric mapping, and search-and-rescue support. Universities, research institutes, defense organizations, and environmental agencies use ASVs for data gathering and surveillance.

In microbiology, ASVs also refer to Amplicon Sequence Variants, a high-resolution method for analyzing genetic variation in microbial communities from amplicon sequencing data. ASVs represent unique sequences inferred after error correction, enabling discrimination of closely related organisms and improving reproducibility across studies. They differ from traditional OTUs, which cluster sequences at a fixed similarity threshold. Common tools include DADA2 and Deblur. Limitations include dependence on sequencing depth and data quality, sensitivity to errors in low-abundance sequences, and the need for careful taxonomic interpretation based on reference databases.

Because the acronym ASV is used in multiple fields, context is important to distinguish autonomous surface vehicles from Amplicon Sequence Variants.