Swarm of Underwater Drones To Help Explore Ocean

http://singularityhub.com/2009/11/16/swarm-of-underwater-drones-to-help-explore-ocean/

November 16th, 2009 by Aaron Saenz

Release the drones! Jules Jaffe from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institute just received $1 million in funding from the National Science Foundation to build a fleet of drones to explore the ocean. The Autonomous Underwater Explorers (AUE) could help track everything from tsunamis to squid spawn. Looking like miniature Death Stars, the soccer ball sized AUEs will be able to control their buoyancy as they are carried by currents to help researchers map the ocean’s behavior at different levels. Once deployed, the AUE program could help determine the efficacy of protected marine habitats, retrieve the black box from a crashed plane, or track an oil spill.

The underwater drone swarm will eventually help researchers at UC San Diego explore the ocean (left). Right now, there are only five or six of the prototypes (right).

While the AUEs aren’t exactly articulated machines, they have many of the features and benefits ofswarm robotics. As with many swarm robots, their strength is in numbers, and communication between individual bots. A solitary drone could only tell researchers about the conditions in its immediate vicinity. A fleet of drones will be able to describe their relative movement and the variations in ocean activity. It’s a cool concept that has great scalability. Right now Jaffe is planning on hundreds of drones, but imagine what we could learn with thousands or millions. The ocean is the last great frontier on Earth and these unmanned devices may be our best way of exploring it.

Jaffe is already building several prototypes for the AUE, including five or six of the soccer-ball sized ‘motherships’ and about 20 of a smaller version (the mini-AUE). The smaller and larger drones will be able to communicate via acoustic signals. A single mothership AUE could be moored while talking to free floating AUEs and mini-AUEs. The larger drones may have GPS trackers, while the smaller would not. This sort of network would allow Jaffe to measure ocean drift.

Other researchers have built buoyant drones before, some even more sophisticated. Yet none have taken measurements over the distance or period of time that Jaffe’s will. By dispersing a swarm of AUEs and mini-AUEs, Jaffe’s team could get a unique spatial and temporal understanding of the ocean.

Here's a better look at what's going on inside the AUE.

The following video is a presentation Jaffe gave explaining his AUE project. It’s a bit long and may not appeal to those unaccustomed to listening to scientific lectures. You can skip to 26:30 to hear Jaffe introduce the AUE device. He describes the mini-AUE (and shows a prototype) around 31:15. If you stick around to 38:25 and 47:30 he’ll tell you about the use of AUEs to locate plane crashes, and how building a mini-AUE might become a great project for middle school and high school students.

As Jaffe briefly described in the video, the AUEs could be modified with different kinds of instrumentation. They may measure salinity, dissolved oxygen, pH, chlorophyll levels, or turbidity of water. Each of these variables has a significant effect on ocean life. Taken collectively they could give a detailed account of marine habitats, helping governments decide if protected areas of the ocean are thriving.

But there’s really no limit to what these drones could learn. Biological info on marine habitats, meteorological on currents, seismological measurements on underwater earthquakes…the list goes on. Which is probably why the NSF has given Jaffe and his colleagues another $1.5 million to help with the control mechanisms for the movement of the AUEs. Each little drone is just a ball bobbing along under the water’s surface. As a collective they could be a vast net to catch all the secrets of the ocean. Maybe they’ll finally be able to tell me where the monster from Cloverfield came from.

[photo credit: Jaffe Lab, UCSD]
[video credit: UCTV]

Research Vessel Heraclitus

http://www.rvheraclitus.org

Thanks to Felipe Fonseca, metareciclagem for the link.

Since it was built in 1975 by the Institute of Ecotechnics, the Heraclitus has sailed over 250,000 nautical miles studying oceans, coral reefs, rivers, lakes, estuaries and exploring the origins and futures of human cultures.

Planet Water Expeditions carries an unparalleled sailing record of continuous expeditions, which commenced in 1975 with the launch of the R/V Heraclitus from Oakland, California, and is currently sailing on a four-year expedition from the Coral Sea to the Black Sea. Members of the Institute of Ecotechnics, an international non-profit that aims to develop a “technics of ecology and an ecology of technics,” designed and built the Heraclitus in nine months in the mid-1970s. Designed as an expedition vessel, the Heraclitus demonstrates a unique blend of ancient Chinese junk design and modern technology.

PWE’s programs include all aspects of our water planet: oceans, rivers, lakes, ice, and estuaries. The R/V Heraclitus’ numerous voyages across oceans alternating with detailed visits to the great island, coast and estuary systems, provide an opportunity to develop an experiential understanding of our planet and the challenges we face in preserving it. 

A present-day manifestation of the ancient cultural tradition known as “sea-people,” the crews of the Heraclitus explore the ecologies of human cultures, access the biodiversity of local regions, and directly experience the forces of nature that drive our rapidly changing planetary weather systems. 

Expedition Chief and PWE executive vice-president Christine Handte currently directs PWE’s Heraclitus’ expeditions. An Ecotechnics director and fellow of The Explorers Club, Christine has over fifteen years experience operating the ship, and has led numerous Heraclitus expeditions. Captain Claus Tober, a veteran of tens of thousands of sea miles over a decade, is a master of this ancient Chinese junk sailing rig, and revered by his crews as a skilled and subtle Captain interfacing with local sea-people.

PWE’s volunteer directors are all also founding directors of the Institute of Ecotechnics and together have logged thousands of sea miles aboard the Heraclitus.  PWE’s president, Capt. Robert “Rio” Hahn, director emeritus of The Explorers Club, led the Heraclitus’ planetary circumnavigation three-year voyage and a two-year Amazon research expedition. PWE’s other directors are Marie Harding, who served as the first captain of the Heraclitus; Bill Dempster, who oversees the engineering of the Heraclitus; and Judy “Chili” Hawes, Ecotechnics secretary and a veteran of the Heraclitus’ maiden Atlantic crossing. PWE’s adviser, John Allen, conceived the concept and co-designed the Heraclitus, is the co-founder of the world renowned Biosphere 2 Project. 

Planet Water Expeditions offers a unique opportunity for self-motivated individuals seeking experiences of lifetime significance.  Through PWE’s Heraclitus’ programs, and associated Ecotechnics projects, participants engage in a real-world cutting-edge enterprise that challenges and inspires creative approaches to living in today’s multi-cultural, environmentally fragile world.

 

Ressource based economy

Via Cesar Alonso, thanks for the link.

Some of the ideas in this Venus Project are amazing, on the conceptual level, the pragmatic and creative ones. On the other hand, the designs Jacques Fresco is proposing really don't match the philosophy : "James Bond Grand architecture for a more equitable world" just don't really make me believe it is a "new direction".
What disrupts me with a singular "ENTIRELY NEW UPDATED SYSTEM" : I don't believe a visionary architect can propose an entire new way of life and vocabulary ; I believe in how new technologies and new ideas slowly infiltrate and change people's lives, not as one grand radical proposal, but rather many small working transitions. So, as an architect you want to modify the system not by the designing the whole system, but designing intelligent components that will facilitate the creative sustainable activities of other humans. To summarize, it is not about inventing an entire new system, but about programming good building components.

Also I must disagree on the discourse that says Industrial revolution will make us free. This is what we have been attempting since 300 years, the same old ideal future that we never reach, a future for a free "updated new" class (a rich minority of "visionaries") that the rest of humanity must labour and pay for it... Our society is industrial, I am not sure getting rid of 90% of human labour with new supertechnological means is the good underlying priority in the agenda...

In other words, the Jaques Fresco "Venus Project" is an interesting and inspiring Utopian project. Someone has to dream, and show a bundle of possibilities to the majority, and the rest of us, as actor-consumers, can buy into it, more or less. Jacques Fresco is doing his job being the figure of the grand visionary architect for a glorious future, I respect that ; but I think to deeply impact the world, every single human needs to have the freedom, capacity and desire to the the architect of his/her own life. And that might not be possible in a world where resources are limited.

So it goes back to the beginning of the Venus project : "a Resource Based Economy". On this everyone can agree, we need to start by considering the resource before making grand plans. The architect should publicly employ his creative mind to fabricate this fabulous tool that will give an entire new perception of our actual system, a tool with which a new -probably much less fancy than described- future can be built.

Also, you cannot be ethically at both ends of the chains : you cant be judge and jury, and if you are : don't expect any credibility.
It is scary for other to have one grand vision that incorporates all the aspects of a NEW life, it is too intimidating and normative.

To conclude : to work out this "not-new" resource limited word, let's do it in the right order : first, let's set up the "sensors" to measure this limited and changing world.
Before we invent super great grand designs and strategies, let's simply get to know what is happening, and make that knowledge available to everyone.
- There is an open-source project that enables people to do that today : http://pachube.com
- There is a global observatory system : http://earthwatch.unep.net/data/g3os.php
- There is an ocean division of this global observation system that works : http://www.argo.net

So, at that point in history, the glory isn't in the grand future design, but being creatively contributing to these observation and action project.

Personally that's what I am trying to do with Open_Sailing project, and with the World Environment Organization : trying to build open-source instruments to contribute to existing necessary researches. What's interesting is that the complexity of the infrastructure make the CENTRAL figure of the architect obsolete, a good system needs that each participant of the distributed system is an architect, towards a collective wisdom and creativity, social innovation, object oriented politics (Latour), adhocracy, highly tolerant and entropic "open architecture" and "architecture of play".