Seaglider
(Credit: University of Washington)iRobot has secured exclusive commercial rights to develop an unmanned sea-faring robot from a group at the University of Washington.
The Bedford, Mass.-based company made the announcement Tuesday at the annual symposium for the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI).
Specifically, the agreement is to commercialize an AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) called the Seaglider.
The Seaglider was developed by the Applied Physics Laboratory and the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington in conjunction with the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research, which funded the initial project.
iRobot believes the Seaglider has military application potential. The company's Government & Industrial Robots division, the same side of the company that developed its military PackBot, has been put in charge of developing the Seaglider, according to two iRobot sources.
A public statement from co-founder and Chairman Helen Greiner also indicated the company has military use in mind.
"We have a strong track record for transferring new technology from research initiatives into products that support military missions...licensing the Seaglider from the University of Washington will help our robots conquer new underwater frontiers," Greiner said.
As part of the deal, the University of Washington will retain the rights to continue to develop and build Seaglider robots for its own research use, according to iRobot.
iRobot is best known for its vacuum-cleaning Roomba and it's military Packbot, but the company does already sell one underwater robot in its commercial line. The Verro pool-cleaning robot crawls along the floor and walls of a swimming pool to clean it.
While not as glamorous to the general public as walking and talking robots or robots that drive, AUVs have been getting a lot of attention in recent years within the robotics community.
There's an AUV equivalent to the DARPA Urban Grand Challenge, the annual "race" of robot cars. The Office of Naval Research and AUVSI sponsor the annual International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition. The AUVs are judged on things like computer control, power management, and navigation. This year's competition will be held in July at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego. The competition even has its own Facebook group.
Nekton Research's Transphibian uses Nektor flexible fins for both propulsion and control.
(Credit: Nekton Research)One contender for that task is the Transphibian, a 3-foot-long autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) created by Durham, N.C.-based Nekton Research. The Transphibian is designed to identify mines and map the seabed by swimming and crawling through places where troops or ships are likely to follow. Soon, the company hopes to field a type of "kamikaze" suicide model armed with 14 pounds of plastic explosive that can self-destruct and take nearby mines with it. Meanwhile, the human operator stays safely behind the joystick.
This class of AUV is expected to "replace mine-sweeping ships and perform dangerous jobs now done by specialized divers," according to the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Panama City Beach, Fla. The military will spend $50 million acquiring AUVs in the next five years, according to one estimate.
AUV mine clearing is not only safer, according to proponents; it's about 20 times faster.
Case in point: an AUV mine-clearing operation in Iraq allowed the U.S. Navy to clear nearly a square mile of harbor in 16 hours--something that would have taken divers 21 days working without the technology, the Navy told the Associated Press.
No easy task: "The closer in you get to any port or harbor, the greater amount of clutter you will encounter--tires, rocks, coral reefs," a Navy spokesman told the AP. "To screen out all that clutter is a huge job and it takes some very, very technologically advanced sensors."
Still, advances in autonomous vehicles are moving so fast, there's no way the Transphibian class will remain state-of-the-art for long. For instance, it uses flexible fins for both propulsion and control, and hybrid gliders for thrust, completely bypassing exposed props. These innovations allow it to clamber over debris and operate in rough water, according to the manufacturer.
However the Navy is spreading its bets by funding another project at MIT's Bio-Instrumentation Systems Laboratory. Scientists there hope to leapfrog other AUVs and produce one "that can hover, turn, store energy and do all the things a fish does." It does this by mimicking the fin action of the bluegill sunfish, according to the university. The scientists have reportedly already successfully tested a fin made from a thin, flexible, cutting-edge, conductive polymer that replicates the fin motions that propel the sunfish.
On Sunday, an international team of scientists and engineers embarked for a place that has been cut off from Earth's other ecosystems for 26 million years.
Along with two autonomous underwater robots, the Gakkel Ridge expedition team has set out to explore and find life on the Arctic Ocean floor at the North Pole.
The team, which includes scientists and engineers from Germany, Japan, Norway, Sweden and the United States, set sail from Svalbard, an island near the Arctic Circle, for the Gakkel Ridge, the deepest and most remote part of the Artic Ocean.
A topographic and bathymetric map of the Arctic Ocean with the planned Gakkel Ridge expedition path.
(Credit: Jack Cook/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution/National Geophysical Data Center)The landmark expedition, which will run through August 10, has two main purposes.
First, the team hopes to find life in what the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) describes as "the world's most isolated ocean." The scientists intend to search the isolated area between Siberia and Greenland for submerged hot springs known as sea floor hydrothermal vents, which, it is hoped, support sea life.
It is unknown what wildlife, if any, will be found, but the team plans to keep the public abreast of its findings by posting a photo journal from WHOI's Polar Discovery Web site and videos and audio to the Dive and Discover site for children.
But the expedition is also a test for the two new autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), which may have even more exotic exploration in their future.
The two robots, named Puma and Jaguar, were built by WHOI but funded by NASA. The U.S. space agency is interested in sending AUVs to explore beneath ice-covered oceans in outer space, such as those found on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons.
In addition to NASA's Astrobiology Program and the WHOI Deep Ocean Exploration Institute, the Gakkel Ridge expedition is also sponsored by the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs and Division of Ocean Sciences, and the Gordon Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems division of its Engineering Research Center.
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