audio location 145

Research water tank

Underwater autonomous vehicle waits for instructions next to the hull of a boat under the lake's surface

In this 10,000 gallon water tank, researchers puts robots to the test in the unforgiving–to electonics–water. Beyond the moisture that can short out components, water makes many other tasks harder: sensing, communciating, and moving, especially in teams of robots. In deep water, for example, vision can be hazy and dark, with colors shifted from their normal wavelengths.

Labs like the Field Robotics Group develop robot vision and machine learning algorithms to utilize raw data, such as from sonar, and refine it to achieve their goals, enabling tasks such as autonomous mapping and shipwreck detection underwater. This tank is outfitted with above and underwater motion capture cameras, helping researchers to accurately test their robot’s position.

audio transcript
Autonomous systems aren't limited to land or air. Marine robotics open up possibilities to explore, transport across and monitor the over 70% of Earth's surface that is water. Water, however, is a very tough environment for robots for several reasons. Water makes it tough to send signals or data. Water distorts the images and video used for vision based sensing. Water is classically wet, making electronics susceptible to damage, and saltwater presents even more challenges in terms of corrosion and durability.

These are all problems that researchers use this water tank to help solve and get robots out on the open water. Listen to a shipwreck expedition led by the Field Robotics Group's Professor Katie Skinner in Alpena, Michigan, at the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

So we just deploy the IVER for its first mission of the day. So we deploy it off to the side of the boat. We watch it go to its first waypoint on the surface, and it will dive down for the first leg. The program's lawnmower pattern, which means it will, do eight different legs in kind of a lawnmower fashion for this survey. What we're trying to look at is we know where the shipwreck is. This is a well known wreck. But we're looking for clues that would teach underwater vehicles like ours to be able to find wrecks more efficiently. So we're looking for patterns in the bottom, debris that may have fallen off the ship during the time it was sinking.

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Research water tank

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