"SEABOTS researchers develop enabling technologies for ocean and space scientists to conduct relatively inexpensive, in-situ monitoring of remote environments using mobile, adaptive sensor swarms that are renewably energized by the monitored environment," George Hagerman, SEABOTS researcher.

Whether surveying mid-ocean ridges for thermal vents, monitoring fish populations in shallow sea grass beds, or searching for life-precursor conditions beneath the ice-covered ocean of Jupiter’s moon, Europa, Virginia Tech researchers associated with the new project

SEABOTS are working to develop swarms of petite robots that will monitor natural environments in unobtrusive ways.

SEABOTS, Sustainably Energized, Adaptive, Biomimetic, Oceanic and Terrestrial Swarms, integrates technology developments to achieve its goals, including: Biomimetic swarming behavior and insect-like cooperation

• Standard communication and power distribution “bus” for swarm vehicles, to accept varied sensor payloads
  

• Renewable energy harvesting, storage, and power conditioning
  

• Recognition of common challenges in ocean and space science and exploration

• Multi-agent networks of intelligent sensors

The modular robotic vehicles, or “bots” for short, are created in a similar size and mode as the plants or animals native to the environment being studied.

“Each bot would collect data in an undisturbed setting, just as though the bot naturally belonged there,” said George Hagerman, an ARI researcher who helped develop the SEABOTS concept. “Consider the mapping of groundwater contamination, for instance.  Digging wells to sample groundwater is costly and disturbs the soil and local water table, whereas a swarm of ‘seed-pod bots’ scattered over the landscape, with fiber optic rootlets to measure the concentration of dissolved chemicals could obtain more truly representative data over a much wider area, for a fraction of the cost.”

A SEABOTS system would consist of tens to hundreds of bots to collect data from a chosen site and to relay the data back to human users.  Because each site requires so many bots to view the complete picture, keeping the bots inexpensive is important.

“To keep bots cost-effective, each type of bot would have a specific job, just like the different types of drones in an ant or termite colony,” Hagerman said. “For example, an agriculture researcher might employ a swarm of earthworm bots.  Some bots would measure soil temperature, while others would measure moisture or nutrient levels. Each bot type has a specific task, payload or sensor package, but its underlying vehicle structure is the same as all of the others.  If we can keep the specialized functions distributed, we can keep them inexpensive.”

A dozen Virginia Tech researchers based at ARI and in Blacksburg will team up to develop and demonstrate SEABOTS systems, pooling their expertise from among the following fields: energy harvesting, oceanic vehicles, terrestrial vehicles, sensor miniaturization and packaging, wireless communications and networking and human-computer interface.

>For more information, please contact George Hagerman at 703-535-3461 or hagerman@vt.edu

Natural seeps in the Gulf of Mexico fuel
"Life without sunlight," as part of SEABOT.

SEABOTS Distinguishing Features:

1. Integration of previously developed technologies into end-to-end systems, with more basic research undertaken only to bridge the gaps between existing technologies or to develop specific components that are not already available from previous research efforts.

2. Science-driven scenarios for fielded demonstration systems, as specified by an External Advisory Board and informed by ARI-hosted workshops that reach out to the broader community of ocean and space researchers and educators who would be potential users.

3. Sustainability of fielded systems, not only in terms of energy harvesting and management, but also in terms of adaptive reaction to the measured environment, in situ sensor calibration, and autonomous mechanisms for self-inspection, maintenance, and repair.

4. Affordability of fielded systems, using commercial off-the-shelf components wherever possible, providing mass-producible designs for common vehicle hardware (propulsion/locomotion, energy storage and management, modular infrastructure “buses” for sensor-communication-intelligence payloads), and open-source software for operating systems and programming interfaces.

5.  Usability of fielded systems, including maximizing the reconfigurability of drone payloads, intuitive human-computer interfaces for programming autonomous vehicle mission scripts, varying levels of human intervention by remote teleoperation of swarm delivery vehicles and expeditionary swarms, and immersive, telepresent, real-time visualization of swarm data by research or educational users, who would have the capability to override autonomous navigation and re-direct swarm investigations.

Copyright ARI 2003

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