The salinity profiles are from Clayton Jones at Webb Research.
pendent actions. The vehicles were programmed to communicate and take action based on how much charge they had. They would decide when they needed to surface in order to recharge in the sunlight and go back to work when fully charged. While one was sunbathing at the surface the other vehicle was running survey lines underwater. The third vehicle was standing by, charged and ready to take over in case one of the other vehicles failed. With this success behind them the team will now address how to deal with specific environmental conditions that affect each vehicle differently. Cross fertilization of ideas coming from other disciplines is also encouraged at this conference. Bill Stone of Stone Aerospace, Inc. talked about the vehicle his crew developed and tested over the past three years for a NASA mission. Stone is the principal investigator of to design and build a vehicle that will be deployed on a space craft, landed on the new planet, Europa and drilled into the icy surface and deployed in water beneath to map life and topography in the center of the planet. There was a Discovery show about this vehicle as well as a Popular
40 MTR
Science article. The potato shaped vehicle has been deployed in tests in hydrothermal springs in Mexico. It uses many sonar pingers to draw a 3-D image of its surroundings. Based on the resultant image, it decides to hover near an interesting area and move a manipulator arm out to take a sample of substrate, rock or plant life. The DEPTHX Project vehicle will be deployed under ice in the coming year. Flapping foils and undulating fins were covered at the conference too. The Finnegan (Robo Turtle) developed by Stephen Licht with oversight by Michael Triantafyllou of the MIT Center for Ocean Engineering uses the motion of a turtle's fins to propel and stabilize an AUV. New England Aquarium's Myrtle the Turtle was observed swimming in the giant ocean tank. Her movements were modeled at MIT and a prototype vehicle propelled by two sets of coordinating fins was built. The vehicle cruises at 2 knots and is ready for optimization work. Jason Geder of the Naval Research Lab came up with another idea, which was to mimic the motion of a compliant fin, much like a human hand with webbing
October 2007
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