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Underwater Robots for Everyone
Dirak writes "A small 112-pound ocean glider named Spray is the first autonomous underwater vehicle to cross the Gulf Stream underwater. Launched September 11, 2004, it has been slowly making 12 miles per day measuring various properties of the ocean. Spray spent 15 minutes three times a day on the surface to relay its position and information about ocean conditions and then glided back down to 3,300-feet depth ." And reader RoboFreak writes "Two Computer Science students at Brigham Young University-Hawaii have developed a Low Cost Autonomous Underwater Vehicle. The students also entered their robot, LUV, in the AUVSI and ONR's 7th International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition at San Diego, CA and competed against top Ivy-League teams. Their robot received recognition in the form of an award at this competition. This robot was designed with a budget of only about $600 and seems to be the cheapest AUV around. One of the AUV designers' interview conducted by Amit Kr Chanda of The Times of India is available here."
A game called Evil Genius, Robots with Shotguns, and now Underwater Robots. Must... not... make... Austin... Powers... Joke.
Its nice to see a few bucks thrown towards exploring our own planet. Sure its great to look for life on other planets, but there are still "creatures of the deep" right here waiting to be discovered. Granted this particular craft didn't have life exploration but this technology could be mass produced at that price and scour the oceans for all kinds of goodies.
There's been a lot of talk about robots around here lately, so I want to reiterate - It's all good until they become self aware!
I for one won't be satisfied until they have sharks with frickin' lasers on their heads, at which time I'll welcome our new weaponized underwater...underlords. meh.
This is great for people who want to do underwater stuff cheaply, but it isn't for everyone. When was the last time you needed an underwater robot? There are lots of people who would be able to put these to good use. There are people using underwater robots to log dead trees that were submerged by the construction of dams. Using lots of cheaper underwater robots could be a better way of doing underwater exploration than a few expensive but beefier robots.
There seems to be an awful lot of articles on robots lately. I'm beginning to worry the slashdot offices were taken over by shotgun wielding robots who have just gained underwater capabilities. Due to the robots iron grasp, this is the only way the editors can commmunicate to us their need for help against them.
http://www.commaecho.com
cornell university has a student team that competes in the same AUVSI competition, and has a pretty sweet vehicle. designed almost exclusively by engineering undergrads, with no faculty intervention, and a lot of the components and boards are designed in-house. cool sensors, cool computers, and it all runs gentoo!
As a studying EE stuff like this facinates me.
Just uses a small Li Ion battery to change its relative density to float or sink..it jsut does this at 45 degrees to make forward progress. No prop or anything.
Stuff like this is NOT easy to do, although quite a bit easier that a land vehicle that has to navigate an obstacle course at speed. But to have these little guys make long distance treks MULTIPLE times while doing very well to keep its line and make measurements while its going it..VERY good engineering for the amount of money spent.
I wonder if they ever have a problem with ocean life? Plenty of larger fish and sharks in that water..would be kind of funny/sad if one got eaten.
They say in the webpage about it that one got ran over by a surface vehicle and still completed it run, since it has an antenna in each wing and only one wing was damaged.
I say again, this is great engineering.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
That is just so cool, I have nothing more to say. I didn't even imagine that such a simple construction could travel such distances.
I got how it propelled forward, but how is it possible to change directions perpendicular to it's axis of motion (left and right). Does it rotate so that it's wings arent at the same level? Did anyone get that part?
Interesting to see how it struggeled through the Gulf Stream which basicly makes it possible to live in Norway. Do you think they'll tell if they loose contact with one? In case, I'll be prepared to fish out my new gadget as it flows by.
But do they have underwater shotguns?
...before the terrorists learn about them.
Oops, too late.
Coming soon to a hastily evacuated seaport near you.
sigs, as if you care.
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Man!
Only $600 for one of these puppies. I'm getting one, underwater camera and all, for the local university pool.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
"Refueling cost ~ $3000"
And we thought oil was expensive?!?!
We have a problem coming up.
AutoCAD had been sponsoring undersea explororation for quite some time.
AutoCAD is the big gorilla in the CAD world, but we never see anyone complaining about their domination.
Is this because nobody knows what CAD is all about?
No, they just create new land using infilling. Create a concrete wall around the area you want, pump out the water, and fill the space with whatever you have available (garbage, dirt, sand, dredged up silt, blown up mountains). That gives you several levels of basements, plus land ready for the construction of airports, office blocks and shopping malls. And you solve coastal erosion at the same time.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Wow, you guys never get over anything do ya? It must suck to be a liberal.....
No, it does not beg the question.
Talk about clever design, this is like the Burt Rutan of underwater. I wonder if we'll see new developments on this technology, like submarine tourism, the underwater X-prize or something like that.
Our military already has the ability to place ordinance on any square meter of the earth within 4 hours. Doing it underwater that takes 10 days is lame.
I feel compelled to point out the work that Cornell students are doing in AUV development. We have a student project team called CUAUV, http://www.cuauv.org/. Our vehicle, in its fourth generation is capabile of extended deployments and real-world missions in deep water.
CUAUV showcases its work annually at the international AUV competition held at the Navy Space and Naval Warfare Systems facility (SPAWAR) in San Diego. The competition is organized by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR). Cornell won the 2003 competition, placed second in 2004 and 2002, and is one of the most consistently innovative and successful teams to participate each year.
Although the competition provides an excellent framework for the development of our platform, we pride ourselves on our submarine's capability to perform a wide range of missions beyond the scope of the competition. A single trial in the competition is often as short as fifteen minutes, but our submarine can easily perform a six-hour continuous mission. We have taken great care to keep our vehicle platform robust and modular - competitive with the best commercial AUVs available today. Our vehicle serves as an advanced research platform, and we are continually looking to develop new partnerships within the research community.
Just think, an autonomous drug smuggling robot sub that could drop its cargo if the coast guard gets uncomfortably close, then go back and retrieve it later. And even if it were captured or destroyed, there would be nobody on board to turn state's evidence against their boss. (Presumably it would automatically wipe its memory if tampered with) About the only way to catch the smugglers in the act would be to covertly track the robot to the rendezvous point.
In the vein of the shotgun toting robot, it might make an effective military weapon as well. A tiny, autonomous sub that could navigate a pre-programmed course and deliver a nuke, launch torpedoes and drop mines at a predesignated target. Sort of an underwater cruise missile or recon drone.
My rights don't need management.
after that we should tell all the anomynous cowards to login and to lern how two spel and that a period is what you use when you finish a thot about pres. bush who may or may not be a creationist but he isnt a scintist anyway hes the president so get off his back all ready.
While I'm trolling, "global warming" is the montra of the ecoterrorists. They need to have something to shout about to make themselves feel important, noble, and good. They have taken as article of Faith that Man, in his evil, is causing the Earth to get warmer. Never mind that we occupy less than a third of the Earth's surface, and not all of that, and the bottom hundred feet or so of its hundred-mile thick atmosphere.
On the other hand ... being able to place underwater mines in that fashion could be valuable. Forget the wheels: just send a flock of smartbots to cover a shipping lane or a port. They might have to surface every now and then for instructions and then hide on the bottom again. If they get told: "detonate when any ship meeting sonar profile AA93 comes within range" or something like that things would get difficult for the bad guys.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
just imagine a beowulf cluster of thes......
on a more serious note, these sound pretty cool. i know what i'm asking for for my next birthday....
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
Remember that with autonomous underwater vehicles you can throw away requirements for safety of the operator and equipment to keep the driver alive. Couple that with the philosiphy that you don't care how fast it goes as long as it does science and goes somewhere eventually, and you end up with a super cheap robot.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Some of the comments here are along the same lines I was thinking...does one have to clear this sort of thing with homeland security or the coast guard? I didn't see anything to that effect on the main Spray site.
would be an interesting thing, though...looking at the shape and size of the thing, and considering that it makes a regular phone call via sattelite. Wow. that might be mistaken for something different altogether...
Yes, but does it convert gentiles?
Under the sea, under the sea, There'll be no accusations, just friendly crustaceans Under the sea!
now who else read that as "Underwear Robots for Everyone"?
I wonder if you could attach a solar panel for when it surfaces, or a propeller that, instead of pushing it foward, recharges the battery as it spins, and send one of these things across the ocean, maybe with a little camera and light mounted on it to take pictures as it goes. That would be a lot of fun. Just set it in the ocean and see how long it can go.
Ted Kennedy did this first quite some time ago, but I believe his vehicle was still manned.
At first glance I thought it read "Underwear robots for everyone". My initial reaction was "WTF?!?!?"
The LDS church announces that it is willing to baptize robots that openly proclaim the Mormon faith...
Can someone explain why the sac is on the back of the device? One would expect that if the volume is increased, the back wants to rise.
Bert
This was actually our third attempt to make it from Nantucket to Bermuda, the first two launches unfortunately ran into technical problems very early into the mission.
You can see the data it sent back over the IRIDIUM phone network every seven hours at these pages:
WHOI Instument page about the SPRAY glider
Our real-time plots page
Make sure you check out the plot of velocities when it got caught in the gulf stream
Also particularly interesting are the Continuous Temperature plot
and the Continuous Salinity (salt content) profile.
And you can also view the path it took to Bermuda
We hope to launch it again early next year, possibly for a roundtrip around Bermuda.
There is actually an informative and readable press release about the glider in general and the mission it just finished.
Who the hell *doesn't* need an underwater robot? Food, oxygen, underwater robot, shelter.
What the hell was I supposed to be doing? I was going to do something, and now I'm on
Underwater robots that can go long distances on the seabed with 20-50 kilos of 'sensitive goods', use GPS to maintain their course (if GPS works underwater), wait quietly at a predetermined destination upon arrival, and then float to the surface and signal their exact location to a pick-up cigar boat would be a dream to smugglers.
'Log dead trees?'
Man, you are not thinking about the real possiblities that these machines offer!!
This idea was already discussed once upon a time on Slashdot. It has a few "minor" caveats - in order to move without any noise an underwater glider needs a reasonable depth differential. Practically this means that it needs a few hundred meters depth. In addition to that it has very few passive means of verifying its position under water because GPS signals do not penetrate even a thin water layer. While you can get a fairly good precision using gyros, a gyro that is suitable for installation on an underwater glider is likely to cost 20000+. So so much for the cheap and cheerful method of delivering a lethal blow inside the enemy port. Major shipping lanes in very deep straights like the Bosphorus, the horn of Africa, the exit from the Persian Gulf - maybe. But any of these targets are reachable by conventional means without causing any suspicion so what's the point?
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Underwater autonomous submarines? We're not talking about a large jump to underwater cruise missiles here. Or autonomous attack submarines like the Predator drone. WOuldn't be too hard to program a few to sneak into enemy waters and hunt down shipping at random or launch bulk cruise torpedo strike from hald way around the world to destroy enemy ports and warships.
Frankly, I'm still waiting for the Catamaran Aircraft Carrier.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Autocad is no longer the gorilla it used to be. Solidworks is eating their lunch, at least from what I have seen, although it is unfortunate neither one of them has embraced OSX so I can justify one of those pretty machines.
A solid modelling open source program of comparable quality would make real difference to small manufacturing companies. I am suprised nothing like this has appeared already, actually.
..don't panic
How does just pumping the mineral oil from the inside to the outside of the robot change buoyancy if the bladder is still attached?
[sound of light bulb lighting]
Ah, I see. You could have a harbor full of underwater drones, like antibodies. They cruise around looking for stuff and send up warning signals.
You wouldn't want them to do anything on their own, to minimize the damage of a false positive. Blowing up a boat full of Cuban refugees might not be politically viable.
sigs, as if you care.
all the robot stories... and not even on slashdot.jp
All the torrents you could want.
Possibly like what some guys at the ANU are doing?
http://syseng.anu.edu.au/Projects/Serafina/
Underwater robots for some, miniature American flags for everyone else.
The page quotes the cattery cost alone at $3000, so I am confused why the posting states it was built for around $600?
i dont; beleive bush was ever called a scientist and creationisim brought into the topic. What was brought in was his and his administration's disregard for science and scientists that disagree with his opinion on things. If you would liek to read further on this topic please google it. I do beleive you may be operating with a pro bush bias... the statements have been misread or misunderstood in that light even Russia signed and ratified the Kyoto treaty.
I don't think anyone cares if Bush is a creationist or not. I don't disliek or like him he is rather unremarkeable. The peopel who disliek Bush generally react on his stuborness and he is that clearly.
Jed Bush on the other hand is likeable and a good governor.
No, but the bladder is. :)
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
The global war on terror is won.
You must be an American juvenile to utter such a naive statement. First: there are only some terrorists in Iran, the rest are innocent men/women/children. Muslim extremists living in other countries would retaliate, preferably causing millions of American men/women/children to die. Second: as soon it is known the US did this, allies of Iran would retaliate, causing a Global Thermonuclear War. Too bad you're posting AC, so you will probably never read this. Grow up, please.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --