Sea Perch Workshop at Worcester Polytechnic Institute Brings Underwater Robotics into Classrooms
MIT Outreach Groups Collaborate for Successful Summer Program
Sea Perch Teacher Training Announced: Worcester, MA, November 6-7, 2009
- Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
- Underwater Communications
- Oceanography
In exploring the oceans, our goal is to develop and maintain the platforms and infrastructure needed for ocean exploration, as well as to develop the sensors and software required for increased access to our seas. While our various research projects stand as independent efforts, the shared wider goals of many projects provide more far-reaching benefits than would be otherwise possible.
PI(s): Harry Hemond, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Joseph Sinfield, Purdue University
Project Summary: In this project, researchers are designing, building, and demonstrating a highly capable AUV-based, optical system to characterize several important categories of high-molecular-weight compounds. This will complement the capabilities of existing AUV-based sensors and serve as a step toward comprehensive chemical sensing from AUV platforms. The long-term goal is to outfit small, affordable AUVs with a suite of chemical sensors that can collectively provide real-time chemical characterization of natural waters for scientists, coastal managers, and others concerned with water quality.
PI(s): Milica Stojanovic, MIT
Project Summary: In this project, researchers are demonstrating the feasibility of wireless underwater video transmission. This involves combining the latest video compression technology (e.g., MPEG4) with recent advances in high-speed underwater acoustic signal transmission. Thre are many reas in which wireless underwater video transmission would be very useful, including environmental monitoring and supervisory control of AUVs serving deep-sea oilfields.
PI(s): Cabell Davis, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Project Summary: In this project, the researchers are developing a compact, low-power, holographic imaging system that can be used on gliders and drifters and designing software/hardware solutions for on-board image processing and automatic identification of plankton from holograms. This research will allow autonomous collection of high-resolution spatio-temporal data on plankton size and taxonomic composition-––a fundamental need in the study of aquatic ecosystems. This type of sampling will help solve the problem of sparse taxonomic data in biological oceanography.
PI(s): Franz Hover, MIT, Jess Adkins, California Institute of Technology
Project Summary: The researchers are applying AUV technology to the task of finding, monitoring, and sampling benthic environments. This will includes developing new strategies for AUV navigation, control and manipulation. These capabilities will aid in the study of deep-water corals, which are an important record of past climate shifts, and thus play a major role in understanding climate change.
PI(s): George Karniadakis, MIT
Project Summary: Data assimilation for ocean forecasting remains a great challenge in physical oceanography. In this project, the researchers are developing and demonstrating new fast adaptive sampling schemes through field measurements. These techniques will be used to monitor the extended regions of Massachusetts Bay/Cape Cod Bay and to support coastal prediction and management in the region.
PI(s): Steve Leeb, MIT, Robert W. Cox, UNC Charlotte
Project Summary: Electrical power data can be used to detect many shipboard fault conditions. Because power monitoring requires far less hardware than most modern diagnostic tools, a non-intrusive monitor could make condition-based maintenance affordable for ships with small operating budgets. In this project, researchers are developing a low-cost diagnostic platform, with testing aboard AUVs and Coast Guard Cutters.
PI(s): Milica Stojanovic, MIT Sea Grant, Michael Triantafyllou, MIT, Michele Zorzi,
Project Summary: Key components of future ocean observation systems will include sensor technology, vehicular technology and communications technology. In this project, researchers are focusing on demonstrating a mobile acoustic underwater network that integrates acoustic links into an autonomous multiple-vehicle communication network. Integrated networks of instruments, sensors, robots and vehicles will operate together in a variety of underwater environments, with applications including environmental monitoring (for climate recording, pollution control); collection of scientific data (oceanography, geophysics, chemistry, marine biology, deep-sea archaeology); and efficient search and survey (for detection of objects, ocean bottom imaging and mapping by fleets of cooperating autonomous mobile platforms).
PI(s): Jeffrey Lang, MIT, Michael Triantafyllou, MIT, Franz Hover, MIT
Project Summary: In this project, researchers are developing and deploying inexpensive, low-power sensors. These sensors will be able to passively detect dynamic and static pressure fields with enough resolution to detect those objects and bodies creating the disturbance. The sensors will allow better ocean observation, environmental monitoring, and fisheries observation, especially in near-shore areas, where vehicles are subject to strong waves and currents as well as multiple obstacles.
PI(s): Cabell Davis, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
Project Summary: The researchers are developing a modular multi-scale imaging system and incorporating this into an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) for autonomous quantification of distributional patterns of plankton, micronekton and nekton species. Using these imaging systems on a fleet of AUVs would provide high-resolution 3D distributional data on species over a broad area and improve the understanding and prediction of abundance patterns in marine population. Such data are essential to fisheries management and water quality science.
