Overview

In this collaborative project with the University of Pennsylvania, we are investigating how to coordinate active floaters with limited mobility and communication capacity, with more capable underwater or surface robotic vehicles, in order to establish a reconfigurable sensor network that exploits the physics of their ambient environment.

More than 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered in water.  There is a great need to survey, monitor, and search over large swaths of ocean, either for monitor algae, measure water quality, or track the dissipation of pollutants.  Miniature, inexpensive, semi-passive drifters can be deployed in numbers to form a large-scale sensor network over an aquatic environment for survey purposes, but in order to maximize their deployment time, given their limited resources, it makes sense to use the natural current and “ride” this flow as they make their way through the ocean.  How the floaters can make the most use of this ambient resource and harvest this energy from their physical environment to perform their survey task is one big part of this collaborative research effort.

The realization of this spatially distributed sensor networ presents unique new research challenges in optimization, operational research, and cooperative control.

Funding Organization: ONR

Duration: 3 years

Budget (UD portion): $300,000

Participants: PENN, UD