11 OREGON STATE ENGINEERING WINTER 2025 communication and localization underwater; and navigation and decision-making algorithms that would allow the robots to adapt their behavior and data collection efforts based on the conditions they encounter. “Once the robots are deployed, they are on their own out there. They won’t be able to surface to send information, they will only be able to communicate with each other,” said Garwood, whose past work has involved putting robots in the ocean to investigate how ocean currents move small marine organisms. “So, the robots might be programmed to identify a freshwater signal coming from a melting glacier and follow that signal, for example.” As part of the project, the researchers plan to conduct a series of tests in freshwater, including a frozen lake in Oregon. “The immediate goal is to develop these tools and systems,” Garwood said. “The end goal is to get under ice shelves so we can investigate ice-ocean dynamics and monitor changes in ocean conditions. Such a system may also be effective in other environments, such as in the coastal ocean, where teams of resident robots could monitor ocean conditions and adapt their sampling behaviors to respond to specific subsurface signals, such as low oxygen waters.” Multi-robot systems already exist for aerial and ground environments, says Hollinger, who as director of Oregon State’s Robotic DecisionMaking Laboratory, leads several other projects focused on underwater robotic systems, including a system to autonomously perform inspection and maintenance operations for marine energy arrays, such as PacWave. “Existing systems cannot overcome the communication, sensing, and coordination challenges imposed by the under-ice environment,” Hollinger said. “Solving these problems and deploying in new environments has enormous potential to teach us about glaciers and the ocean.” The research team also includes Phil Lundrigan of Brigham Young University; Atsuhiro Muto of Temple University; Nicholas Rypkema of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Yu She of Purdue University; and Xi Yu of West Virginia University. The project originated from a National Science Foundation-sponsored Ideas Lab workshop that brought together scientists from several disciplines, including robotics, polar science, oceanography, and engineering, to brainstorm innovative solutions to advance underwater science. Geoff Hollinger, professor of robotics and the Ron and Judy Adams Faculty Scholar “Existing systems cannot overcome the communication, sensing, and coordination challengs imposed by the ice environment. Solving these problems and deploying in new environments has enormous potential to teach us about glaciers and the ocean.” ABOVE One of Hollinger and team’s underwater vehicles, called Blue ROV2, will be re-designed to develop the mothership system for exploring confined, hard-to-reach environments such as cavities under ice shelves.
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