WHOI
underwater robot takes first known automated sample from ocean
 |
| Credit: Evan Lubofsky/WHOI |
Last month, an international team of researchers used one of WHOI’s underwater robots, Nereid Under Ice (NUI), to explore Kolumbo volcano, an active submarine volcano off Greece’s famed Santorini island.
“For a vehicle to take a sample without a pilot driving it was a huge step forward,” says Rich Camilli, an associate scientist at WHOI leading the development of automation technology as part of NASA’s Planetary Science and Technology from Analog Research (PSTAR) interdisciplinary research program. “One of our goals was to toss out the joystick, and we were able to do just that.”
As
with self-driving cars, handing the wheel over to a computer algorithm can be
unsettling. The same goes for ocean robots, especially when they need to work
in tricky and hazardous environments.
Camilli was part of an international team of researchers on an expedition aimed at learning about life in the harsh, chemical-laden environment of Kolumbo, and also exploring the extent to which scientists can hand over the controls to ocean robots and allow them to explore without human intervention.
Camilli was part of an international team of researchers on an expedition aimed at learning about life in the harsh, chemical-laden environment of Kolumbo, and also exploring the extent to which scientists can hand over the controls to ocean robots and allow them to explore without human intervention.
Slightly
smaller than a Smart Car, NUI was equipped with Artificial
Intelligence (AI)-based automated planning software—including a planner named
‘Spock’—that enabled the ROV to decide which sites to visit in the volcano and
take samples autonomously.
Key
Takeaways
Researchers
at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and colleagues successfully took the
first known autonomous robotic sample from the ocean.
The
sample—sediment from the Kolumbo submarine volcano in the Aegean Sea—will be
used to better understand microbial life inhabiting the volcano.
This
kind of techonology is particularly important for future exploration missions
of ocean worlds beyond our solar system.
Gideon
Billings, a guest student from the University of Michigan whose thesis research
focuses on automated technologies, got the honors of using his code to collect
the very first automated sample, which was of a patch of sediment from
Kolumbo’s mineral-rich seafloor.
He issued a command to the autonomous manipulator and, moments later, a slurp-sample hose attached to the robotic arm extended down to the precise sample location and sucked up the dirt.
He issued a command to the autonomous manipulator and, moments later, a slurp-sample hose attached to the robotic arm extended down to the precise sample location and sucked up the dirt.
Billings
says this level of automation will be important for NASA as they look toward
developing technologies to explore ocean worlds beyond our solar system.
“If we have this grand vision of sending robots to places like Europa and Enceladus [the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively], they will ultimately need to work independently like this and without the assistance of a pilot,” he says.
“If we have this grand vision of sending robots to places like Europa and Enceladus [the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively], they will ultimately need to work independently like this and without the assistance of a pilot,” he says.
Moving
forward, Camilli will continue working with Billings and colleagues at
the University
of Michigan, as well as researchers from the Australian Centre for Field Robotics, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, and the Toyota Technological Institute at
Chicago to push the automation technology forward.
The work will include training ocean robots to see like ROV pilots using “gaze tracking” technology, and building a robust human-language interface so scientists can talk directly to robots without a pilot go-between.
The work will include training ocean robots to see like ROV pilots using “gaze tracking” technology, and building a robust human-language interface so scientists can talk directly to robots without a pilot go-between.
“We
can eventually see having a network of cognitive ocean robots where there’s a
shared intelligence spanning an entire fleet, with each vehicle working
cooperatively like bees in a hive,” Camilli says. “It will go well beyond
losing the joystick.”
Funding
for this project was provided by a NASA PSTAR Grant #NNX16AL08 and a National
Science Foundation National Robotics Initiative grant #IIS-1830500.
The
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, non-profit organization on
Cape Cod, Mass., dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher
education. Established in 1930 on a recommendation from the National Academy of
Sciences, its primary mission is to understand the ocean and its interaction
with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate a basic understanding of the
ocean’s role in the changing global environment. For more information, please
visit www.whoi.edu.
