Seminar: Approaching Residency of Marine Robots for Persistent Underwater Autonomy

Dr. Zhuoyuan Song
Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Hawai’i, Manoa

Persistent subsea exploration and monitoring are of vital significance in many fields including early tsunami warning, oceanography, marine biology, coastal safety, natural resource exploitation, and environmental preservation. An emerging frontier of marine robotics is the endeavor to achieve long-term residency of autonomous underwater vehicles. Supported by subsea infrastructures such as ocean observatories, resident autonomous underwater vehicles (RAUVs) can acquire power and cabled communication from off-shore docking stations. RAUV could provide prolonged dynamic measurements of the subsea environment and attend to emerging remote events promptly.

This talk covers our efforts in developing the core technologies and algorithms leading up to long-term marine robotic residency. An automated underwater docking guidance system will be discussed, which includes visual guidance with plenoptic imaging, optimal motion planning, and nonlinear vehicle control. The design of a low-cost visible light communication (VLC) system for near-field, high-speed underwater data transmission will then be presented. Finally, the concept of an Open-access Underwater Robotic Sensing Network (OpenURSNet) and the recent development of a prototype docking station will be reported.