Coordinated Robotics

I am Gideon Billings, a 2nd year pre-candidate PhD in the Deep Optical Perception (DROP) Lab at the University of Michigan, and Nick Goumas is a staff engineer for DROP lab. Throughout today, we will be making some posts to show you are current research work in Hawaii with Coordinated Robotics on the R/V Falkor, operated by Schmidt Ocean Institute.

Pictured above is our modified Iver3 AUV, outfitted with a stereo camera rig for the purpose of imaging the seafloor. DROP lab is collaborating with MIT, Australian Center for Field Robotics, University of Rhode Island, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute under a NASA funded grant to develop autonomous space technologies through terrestrial based research in the ocean.

A day on-board the R/V Falkor begins with breakfast at 7am. Then everyone breaks off in their teams to prepare for the morning work. The UMich team plans the missions we will run for the morning, taking into account the location of the Falkor, the areas of interest to capture image data of the seafloor, and the operating locations of the other teams' vehicles.

One of the great things about field work is it brings you close to the things you are working to understand and conserve. As a small boat was launched off the R/V Falkor, a humpback whale played off the port side, seemingly waving at all on board. While the Falkor cruised along, running acoustic surveys to generate high resolution bathymetric maps, a pod of dolphins played around our keel, taking turns riding on the pressure wave in front of the ship. These run-ins with the creatures of the sea remind us of what's at stake in understanding and conserving our ocean environments.

It is exciting to take part in the Coordinated Robotics mission to push oceanographic technologies forward. This cruise has focused on coordinating and operating multiple autonomous vehicles to explore wide areas of the ocean, generating detailed maps of the seafloor, including information like coral cover, and making chemical analysis of interesting areas. Our Iver is only 1 of 5 autonomous platforms being actively operated on this cruise, not including the Falkor itself, which is running sidescan sonar to create bathymetric maps.

The last post of our takeover shows a series of moments captured from our research cruise with the R/V Falkor. The focus of Coordinated Robotics is not so much on the oceanographic science as it is on advancing the autonomous robotic technologies that will enable scientists to capture richer datasets at reduced cost and operation time. The DROP lab Iver has traveled nearly 100km beneath the ocean in the last three weeks, taking over 200k images of the seafloor. This data will be used to generate visual stereo reconstructions of the ocean floor with maps of coral coverage and regions of scientific interest. The UMich team is just one part in this multi-institutional project, which is pushing forward the state-of-the-art in multi-vehicle underwater exploration.