Nutrient sensors on autonomous vehicles

海洋占据了地球表面的70%，在影响我们的气候、天气和粮食安全方面发挥着关键作用，但它们在很大程度上仍未得到探索或了解。尤其重要的是，我们必须增加对海洋化学的了解，因为它决定了海洋生态系统如何运作并对气候变化和人类活动增加作出反应。海水化学测量通常使用考察船收集水样，然后保存并送回实验室或在船上进行分析。科考船的建造和运营成本高得令人难以置信，这确实限制了我们对海洋中化学物质分布的了解(以及它们如何随着时间的推移而变化)。我们可以说，海洋采样不足。这导致了几个机器人系统(海洋自主系统)的发展，这些系统要么在水面上运行(例如无人水面飞行器)，要么在深水中运行(例如水下滑翔机和自动潜航器)。为了使机器人系统能够实际地取代或增强考察船的活动，它们必须能够在船上进行化学测量。目前确实缺乏可部署在海洋自主系统上的可靠和准确的化学传感器，使这些系统无法充分发挥其潜力。该项目将推动NOC开发的一整套微型营养分析仪的开发，以便它们可以常规部署在自动驾驶车辆上。这些传感器实际上是微型实验室(单芯片实验室)，使用微量的海水样本和化学试剂在微流控通道中进行海水化学分析。这些分析的结果(关于海水中营养物质浓度的信息，如磷酸盐和硅酸盐)将通过卫星从自动飞行器上传输，这样回到实验室的科学家就可以接收实时数据。几年来，我们一直在开发这些传感器，并曾在河流、河口和海洋中部署过它们。该项目将改进传感器，使其更适合在海洋自主系统上部署，并代表着使它们能够在机器人海上车辆上实现常规使用的最后一步。最终，这将产生更完整和更低成本的海洋化学数据集，有助于增进我们对海洋生态系统如何工作以及它们如何应对不断变化的气候的知识。为了确保传感器能够被广泛使用，我们将与业界合作，包括现有的合作伙伴，制造可以出售给广泛用户的商业产品。这将使技术和项目产出得以扩大和广泛使用。

Oceans occupy 70% of Earth's surface and play a key role in influencing our climate, weather and food security, yet they are still largely not yet explored or understood. In particular it is essential that we increase our understanding of ocean chemistry, because it determines how ocean ecosystems function and respond to changes in our climate and increased human activity. Seawater chemical measurements are usually taken using a research ship to collect water samples, which are then either preserved and sent back to the laboratory or analysed on-board the ship. Research ships are incredibly expensive to build and operate, and this really limits our knowledge of chemical distributions in our oceans (and how they change over time). We could say that the oceans are under-sampled.This has led to the development of several robotic systems (Marine Autonomous Systems) which operate either on the surface (e.g. Unmanned Surface Vehicles) or at depth (e.g. underwater gliders and Autosub). In order for robotic systems to be realistically able to replace or augment the activities of a research ship, it is essential for them to be able to take chemical measurements on-board. Currently there is a real lack of reliable and accurate chemical sensors that can be deployed on marine autonomous systems, preventing these systems from reaching their full potential. This project will advance the development of a whole family of miniaturised nutrient analysers developed at NOC so that they can be routinely deployed on autonomous vehicles. The sensors are effectively miniaturised laboratories (lab-on-a-chip) which perform seawater chemical analysis in microfluidic channels using tiny amounts of seawater sample and chemical reagents. The results of these analyses (information about the concentration of nutrients in seawater such as phosphate and silicate) will be transmitted from the autonomous vehicle using satellites, so that scientists back in the lab can receive real-time data. We have been developing these sensors for several years and have deployed them previously in rivers, estuaries and in the ocean. This project will improve the sensors to make them more suitable for deployment on marine autonomous systems, and represents the final push to allow them to achieve routine usage on robotic marine vehicles. Ultimately, this will result in more complete and lower-cost ocean chemical datasets, helping advance our knowledge of how ocean ecosystems work and how they respond to a changing climate.To ensure that the sensors can be used widely, we will work with industry, including existing partners, to make commercial products that can be sold to a wide range of users. This will enable scale-up and widespread use of the technologies and project outputs.