SBIR Phase I: Autonomous Wind and Solar Powered Cargo Vessels

小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是开发风能和太阳能相结合的自主远洋货船。这些船只将能够向孤立的社区提供更便宜和更频繁的海上货运服务，例如阿拉斯加沿海的社区。这项技术寻求通过移除液体或固体燃料或船上船员来降低运营成本，使船只能够更容易地根据特定航线和市场调整大小。该项目还可能通过消除化石燃料排放和减少海洋噪音对野生动物(如海洋哺乳动物)的影响而对环境产生积极影响。这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目将把现有的机器人和能源捕获技术与新开发的风能/太阳能组合能源优化软件和自主应急管理相结合。同时使用风能和太阳光作为动力的船舶面临着一个困难的能量优化问题，无论是在每分钟的基础上，还是在整个航程的规模上；这个项目将建立一个模型来解决这个间歇性问题，给定特定的船舶性能特征和天气预报。同样，该项目将建立一个框架，以解决无人驾驶海洋表面车辆的自主应急管理问题，考虑到一套特定的车辆和系统特征。这项裁决反映了NSF的法定使命，通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为是值得支持的。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to develop autonomous, ocean-going cargo vessels powered by a combination of wind and solar power. These vessels will enable the provision of cheaper and more frequent sea freight service to isolated communities, such as those in coastal Alaska. The technology seeks to the lower operating costs by removing liquid or solid fuels or onboard crew, enabling the vessels to be more readily right-sized to particular routes and markets. The project may also have positive impacts on the environment by eliminating fossil fuel emissions and reducing marine noise impacts on wildlife, such as marine mammals.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will integrate existing robotic and energy capture technologies with newly developed wind/solar combined energy optimization software and autonomous contingency management. A vessel using both the wind and sun for propulsion has a difficult energy optimization problem, both on a minute-to-minute basis but also on the scale of an entire voyage; This project will build a model for solving this intermitancy problem given specific vessel performance characteristics and weather predictions. Likewise, this project will build a framework for addressing the autonomous contingency management problem for uncrewed marine surface vehicles given a particular set of vehicle and system characteristics. The focus will be on ship-to-shore communications contingencies because those are the most serious for the contemplated target system.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.