CAREER: Development of Unmanned Ground Vehicles for Assessing the Health of Secluded Ecosystems (ECHO)

第一部分：非技术描述：了解人类引起的生物多样性变化是我们今天面临的最重要的科学挑战之一。对于拥有世界上大部分生物量和生物多样性的海洋环境来说尤其如此。研究气候变化对海洋生态系统影响的一个特别有效的方法是监测海鸟或海洋哺乳动物等顶级捕食者种群。南大洋的食物网相对较小，涉及的物种较少，因此，在被捕食物种水平上，气候引起的变化直接影响捕食物种水平。例如，像企鹅这样的海鸟是检测和研究这些生态系统变化的理想选择。本研究将传统的帝企鹅种群动态研究方法与使用自动驾驶车辆进行种群动态测量相结合，具有较小的影响和较高的精度。该项目利用了阿特卡湾殖民地现有的长期帝企鹅观测站，这里有生活在威德尔海和南大洋大西洋部分的企鹅。这项研究将启动在南大洋一个尚未得到充分研究的地区收集数十年数据集的工作。它将填补关于帝企鹅状态及其在不断变化的世界中的适应能力的生态知识的重要空白。最后，该项目支持国家科学基金会的目标，即通过对本科生的合作培训，以及为生态系统研究开设机器人新课程，培养新一代科学家。帝企鹅是一种标志性的物种，很少有人能在野外看到。通过这项提案中开发的技术，公众可以实时沉浸在帝企鹅群体的生活中。通过展示现场帝企鹅的实时视频和音频片段，作为社交媒体科学和工程主题的教育材料，实现公众宣传。第二部分：技术说明：由于全球变化，极地生态系统目前受到重大影响。对极地野生动物的可衡量的负面影响已经发生，例如许多海鸟物种的数量减少，包括南极最具象征意义的物种之一帝企鹅的殖民地完全消失。这些对极地物种的现有影响令人担忧，特别是由于恶劣环境和极端偏远造成的技术和后勤挑战，许多极地物种仍然缺乏研究。因此，开发监测这类野生动物种群的技术和工具是当务之急。该项目旨在通过开发下一代远程研究整个种群的工具，帮助缩小关于帝企鹅的主要知识差距，特别是关于它们对不断变化的环境的适应能力。具体而言，该项目的主要目标是实施和测试配备射频识别（RFID）天线和无线网状通信数据记录器的自主无人地面车辆，以便：1)在繁殖期间识别RFID标签的帝企鹅，以研究没有人类存在的种群动态；2)接收来自甚高频VHF-GPS-TDR数据记录仪的全球定位系统时域反射（GPS-TDR）数据集，用于研究海洋动物的行为和分布。自动驾驶车辆将在现有的远程企鹅观测站（SPOT）的帮助下导航。如果实施得当，这项技术可以用于研究企鹅个体的生活史，从而为行为和种群动态研究收集数据。新的数据将有助于在南极洲明智地建立海洋保护区。这个CAREER项目的教育目标是通过将帝企鹅的魅力与机器人研究相结合，提高下一代科学家对STEM教育的兴趣。在这个项目中，将开发和教授一门新的生态系统机器人课程，机器人训练营将允许本科生远程参与南极实地考察，并且将开发一门年度课程，允许K-12学生在繁殖周期内跟踪帝企鹅的生活，使用无人驾驶地面车辆以及现有的帝企鹅天文台获得的实时数据。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。

Part I: Non-technical description: Understanding human-induced changes on biodiversity is one of the most important scientific challenges we face today. This is especially true for marine environments that are home to much of the world’s biomass and biodiversity. A particularly effective approach to investigate the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems is to monitor top-predator populations such as seabirds or marine mammals. The food web in the Southern Ocean in relatively small and involves few species, therefore climate-induced variations at the prey species level directly affect the predator species level. For example, seabirds, like penguins, are ideal to detect and study these ecosystem changes. This study combines traditional methods to study emperor penguin population dynamics with the use of an autonomous vehicle to conduct the population dynamic measurements with less impact and higher accuracy. This project leverages an existing long-term emperor penguin observatory at the Atka Bay colony which hosts penguins living in the Weddell sea and the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean. The study will kickstart the collection of a multi-decadal data set in an area of the Southern Ocean that has been understudied. It will fill important gaps in ecological knowledge on the state of the Emperor penguin and its adaptive capabilities within a changing world. Finally, the project supports NSF goals of training new generations of scientists through collaborative training of undergraduate students and the creation of a new class on robotics for ecosystem study. Emperor penguins are an iconic species that few people will ever see in the wild. Through the technology developed in this proposal, the public can be immersed in real-time into the life of an emperor penguin colony. Public outreach will be achieved by showcasing real-time video and audio footage of emperor penguins from the field as social media science and engineering-themed educational materials.Part II: Technical description: Polar ecosystems currently experience significant impacts due to global changes. Measurable negative effects on polar wildlife have already occurred, such as population decreases of numerous seabird species, including the complete loss of colonies of one of the most emblematic species of the Antarctic, the emperor penguin. These existing impacts on polar species are alarming, especially because many polar species still remain poorly studied due to technical and logistical challenges imposed by the harsh environment and extreme remoteness. Developing technologies and tools for monitoring such wildlife populations is, therefore, a matter of urgency.This project aims to help close major knowledge gaps about the emperor penguin, in particular about their adaptive capability to a changing environment, by the development of next-generation tools to remotely study entire colonies. Specifically, the main goal of this project is to implement and test an autonomous unmanned ground vehicle equipped with Radio-frequency identification (RFID) antennas and wireless mesh communication data-loggers to: 1) identify RFID-tagged emperor penguins during breeding to studying population dynamics without human presence; and 2) receive Global Positioning System-Time Domain Reflectometry (GPS-TDR) datasets from Very High Frequency VHF-GPS-TDR data-loggers without human presence to study animal behavior and distribution at sea. The autonomous vehicles navigation through the colony will be aided by an existing remote penguin observatory (SPOT). Properly implemented, this technology can be used to study of the life history of individual penguins, and therefore gather data for behavioral and population dynamic studies. The new data will contribute to intelligent establishment of marine protected areas in Antarctica. The education objectives of this CAREER project are designed to increase the interest in a STEM education for the next generation of scientists by combining the charisma of the emperor penguin with robotics research. Within this project, a new class on ecosystem robotics will be developed and taught, Robotics boot-camps will allow undergraduate students to remotely participate in Antarctic field trips, and an annual curriculum will be developed that allows K-12 students to follow the life of the emperor penguin during the breeding cycle, powered by real-time data obtained using the unmanned ground vehicle as well as the existing emperor penguin observatory.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.