SBIR Phase I: Autonomous Wind and Solar Powered Cargo Vessels

这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是开发由风能和太阳能组合驱动的自主远洋货船。这些船只将为偏远地区，如阿拉斯加沿海地区，提供更便宜、更频繁的海运服务。该技术旨在通过去除液体或固体燃料或船上人员来降低运营成本，使船舶更容易适应特定航线和市场。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，对环境产生积极影响。这个小企业创新研究（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/太阳能联合能源优化软件和自主应急管理相结合。一艘同时使用风能和太阳能作为推进动力的船只存在一个困难的能量优化问题，无论是在每分钟的基础上，还是在整个航行的规模上；该项目将建立一个模型，根据特定的船舶性能特征和天气预测来解决这种间歇性问题。同样，该项目将建立一个框架，以解决无人海上水面车辆的自主应急管理问题，给定一组特定的车辆和系统特性。重点将放在舰岸通信突发事件上，因为这对预期的目标系统来说是最严重的。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.