Collaborative Research: Ideas Lab: ETAUS Meshed Observations of THE Remote Subsurface with Heterogeneous Intelligent Platforms (MOTHERSHIP)

温暖的海水使冰架融化，破坏了冰川的稳定，增加了流入海洋的冰流，并促进了全球海平面的上升。需要测量冰架下的海洋性质，以改进全球对海平面上升的预测，并预测其社会后果。然而，这样的测量结果很难获得。在这个IDEAS实验室：推进水下科学的工程技术(ETAUS)项目中，将开发一个概念验证母船和乘客系统，以允许未来部署高性能、自主的水下机器人(母船)，该机器人被编程为尽可能安全地在冰架下旅行，以释放一群新颖、低成本的乘客机器人，这些机器人将协调一致，进一步探索冰洞。作为该项目母船和乘客系统的一部分而开发的硬件原型、联网通信系统和协议以及协调算法将有助于在受限和难以到达的环境中推进水下勘探领域。该项目还将通过在俄勒冈州Mate ROV地区竞赛上的演讲吸引来自俄勒冈州小型渔业社区的年轻人，通过科学与工程学徒(ASE)暑期学院计划雇用高中实习生，以及通过在参与机构培训多名本科生和研究生来促进未来科学家和工程师的培训。该项目的目标是开发一种母船和乘客采样系统，通过开放海洋到达难以到达的冰川接地带，以测量冰洞的程度和周围水域的性质。该项目将沿着三个主要领域进行创新：1)客运机器人设计，2)声学通信协议和硬件，以及3)母船和乘客协调算法。新型、低成本的载客机器人将被设想为可以在不同的操作模式之间切换，以优化机动性、功耗或两者的组合，以满足整个部署过程中各种任务的需要。将开发声学通信协议和硬件，以使乘客机器人之间的稳健通信优先于吞吐量，并通过利用乘客之间的飞行时间和到达角来估计相对位置，从而允许群自定位。将设计群体协调算法，根据乘客机器人的相对位置来估计流动方向和强度，以优化导航和功率消耗。网络的性能将在越来越具挑战性的环境中进行测试，即测试将在池塘、未结冰的湖泊中进行，最后将在结冰的湖泊中进行，同时将对具有更大群的网络能力进行建模，以确保系统在海上部署时的可扩展性。最后，为母舰和乘客通信和自我本地化协议开发的软件将是通用的，并开放源码，以允许其他研究团队根据自己的需要调整系统。母船和乘客采样系统不仅将提高冰下观测能力，还将具有更广泛的海洋学应用，如探测和监测水下有害藻华或威胁渔业的缺氧事件。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并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，被认为值得支持。

Melting of ice shelves by warm ocean waters destabilizes glaciers, enhancing ice flow into the ocean and contributing to global sea level rise. Measurements of ocean properties under ice shelves are needed to improve global predictions of sea level rise and to anticipate its societal consequences. Such measurements, however, are challenging to obtain. In this Ideas Lab: Engineering Technologies to Advance Underwater Sciences (ETAUS) project, a proof-of-concept mothership-and-passenger system will be developed to permit the future deployment of a highly capable, autonomous underwater vehicle (the mothership), programmed to travel as far as safely possible under ice shelves to release a swarm of novel, low-cost passenger robots that will coordinate to explore further into the ice cavity. The hardware prototypes, networked communication systems and protocols, and coordination algorithms developed as part of this project’s mothership-and-passenger system will help advance the field of underwater exploration in confined and hard-to-reach environments. The project will also foster the training of future scientists and engineers by engaging youths from small fishing communities in Oregon through presentations at Oregon’s MATE ROV Regional Competition, by employing high-school interns through the Apprenticeships in Science and Engineering (ASE) Summer Academy Program, and by training multiple undergraduate and graduate students at participating institutions.The goal of this project is to develop a mothership-and-passenger sampling system to reach difficult-to-access glacier grounding zones via the open ocean to measure the extent of ice cavities and surrounding water properties. The project will innovate along three main areas of inquiry: 1) passenger robot design, 2) acoustic communication protocols and hardware, and 3) mothership-and-passenger coordination algorithms. Novel, low-cost passenger robots will be conceived that can switch through different operation modes to optimize maneuverability, power consumption, or a combination of both, as needed for various tasks throughout a deployment. Acoustic communication protocols and hardware will be developed to prioritize robust communication between passenger robots over throughput and permit swarm self-localization by utilizing time-of-flight and angle-of-arrival between passengers to estimate relative positions. Swarm coordination algorithms will be designed to estimate flow direction and strength from the passenger robots’ relative positions to optimize navigation and power consumption. The performance of the network will be tested in increasingly challenging environments, i.e., tests will be conducted in a pool, an unfrozen lake, and finally in a frozen lake, while network capabilities with a larger swarm will be modeled to ensure the scalability of the system to ocean deployments. Finally, the software developed for the mothership-and-passenger communication and self-localization protocols will be generalizable and made available open-source to allow other research teams to adapt the system to their own needs. The mothership-and-passenger sampling system will not only advance under-ice-observation capabilities but also have wider oceanographic applications such as detection and monitoring of underwater harmful algal blooms or anoxic events threatening fisheries.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.