Remote Underwater Exploration
Interesting news and activities
There are more and more STEM programs emerging, focusing on underwater robotics challenges for students. Here is a quick list:
The University of North Carolina Wilmington is working with NOAA to create coral maps in the Caribbean using a Mohawk ROV
“…the ship maps the seafloor using a multi-beam system during the night and our team groundtruths the multi-beam during the day,” said Jason White, one of two remotely operated vehicle (ROV) pilots, or technicians, on the team. “So the multi-beam will show all of the features and we will take the ROV to investigate these features.”
Full article at: Starnewsonline.com 17jul19
A juvenile giant squid was caught on video earlier this year at a depth of 759m, responding to a pulsing LED light experiment on a NOAA expedition. This elusive species was last seen on video in 2012 off Japan.
Riviera Maritime Media reported a recent demonstration by Saab showing their Sabretooth AUV’s ability to perform tasks like inspection and maintenance, and return to a subsea docking station for recharging and video download. Quite amazing advance that will allow ROVs/AUVs to stay at depth for dramatically longer periods.
Blue Robotics’ BlueROV2 is also capable of being “permanently submerged” at >800m, which MBARI and The Quest Institute working together with others have done with their unit:
We are about all things ROV, but this news wasn’t what we were expecting. Researchers at University of Richmond’s Lambert Behavioural Neuroscience Laboratory are studying rats trained to drive a “Rat Operated Vehicle” in order to advance human mental health treatment. Maybe an underwater ROV will be the next training session for the rats?
Full article at: CNN 23oct19