DARPA Wants To Seed the Ocean With Delayed-Action Robot Pods

coondoggie writes "This plan sounds a bit like a science fiction scenario where alien devices were planted in the ground thousands of years ago only to be awoken at some predetermined date to destroy the world. Only in this case it's the scientists at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency who want to develop a system of submersible pods that could reside in the world's oceans (presumably not in anyone's territorial waters) and be activated for any number of applications days, months or even years later."

Comments

WTF DARPA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it.

http://www.benthos.com/undersea-acoustic-release-modem-SMART-SM75.asp

The article must be glossing over what makes this unique. Do they want a factor of 10 reduction in price? I've been working on the problem of cheap deep water electronics for nearly a decade so this is relevant to my interests(honestly who in the field of oceanography hasn't? Nobody wants to pay a ship to go un-fuck a $100 science project and mass production of gizmos is not the core competency of scientists in most cases).

DARPA is essentially throwing up their hands at the problem of locomotion and saying it's cheaper from an energy standpoint to just pepper the ocean with lots of sensors than to transport a single sensor over lots of territory pushing water out of the way of its course. "Sensors" is a pretty broad catch-all for payload and can vary in price significantly, impacting the truth of that assertion.

Changing batteries isn't cheap so disposable is desirable. Why not just embed a cell phone in a block of epoxy or polyurethane? It is cheaper to drop ballast than it is to displace 100ATM of water, so they might as well settle on a solenoid fired shear pin or electric door strike type mechanism. Syntactic foam and you can do the whole thing with a cheap prepaid, a pic processor, and a solar cell. Battery life scales with price so that is a matter of mission endurance priorities.

Re:WTF DARPA?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are totally oblivious.

Cell phones are nothing but low cost & mass produced ARM development kits with WiFi adapters and cellular modems that have had the driver compatibilities hashed out by the manufacturer. The user interface is totally redundant in this application, but I'm sure your next line of questioning is "How are you going to use a touch screen through a block of epoxy!"

Use your imagination because I don't feel obligated to connect the dots for someone who thinks that pointing out cellular comms don't work underwater is anything but blatantly obvious. It's not like applications exist that would allow for the hands-free jack to interface with an acoustic modem.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=re.serialout&hl=en
http://acomms.whoi.edu/umodem/

Seeing as DARPAs intention is obviously to achieve force projection along the coast lines of 3rd world shit holes by deploying their surface vehicles and UAS from stealth buoys, maybe they can mesh network their way close enough to shore or their buddy with an Iridium that can call home for further instructions? You know, that way billion dollar aircraft carriers don't have to leave their dicks hanging in the wind to get blown off by an explosive fishing boats,

http://www.batterypoweronline.com/images/PDFs_articles_whitepaper_appros/Bluefin%20Robotics.pdf
How do I shoot web? Toggling power via an MCU is HARD!

Do you have any other inane commentary to make or are you done talking out of your ass?

Re:WTF DARPA?

[RubberDogBone]

saying it's cheaper from an energy standpoint to just pepper the ocean with lots of sensors than to transport a single sensor over lots of territory

Well, yes. There are many scenarios where it would be very cost effective to monitor a large area with scattered smart sand grains, each equipped with enough sensors to do whatever and some method to report back. Toss out a few million of them and wait, then correlate the results being fed back. If some of the sand grains get trashed, oh well. You sent out lots of them. Some will survive.

In a sense, this kind of tracking is nothing but motion capture on a very different scale than putting dots on a bodysuit, but somewhat the same idea. By tracking the dots, you build a shape of the object under the dots.

Personally I think this is a great way to explore space if you have a lot of time for results to come back. Toss out a cloud of smart sand grains and let them scatter across the galaxy. Then just wait for reports to come back. You won't need big rockets. You will just need patience. The only problem is that it will take a lot of time. I am convinced space-exploring species have found better ways to do this and perhaps in time so will we.

Re:WTF DARPA?

[icebike]

Try reading TFA. (Yeah, I know).

They want something sitting on the ocean floor tethered to NOTHING. When it receives a signal, it becomes buoyant, rises to the surface and becomes active, and perhaps even launches an airborn observation platform, (probably balloon or short life drone).

  Until triggered, it is essentially inert, it has no connection with the surface, so a long life power source is needed to keep the radio listening. They are looking for the capability to handle multiple different types of payload, at least initially none of those payloads would be munitions. They want them cheap enough that they can be planted in reasonably large numbers and left there for as long as possible.

Re:WTF DARPA?

[PopeRatzo]

When it receives a signal, it becomes buoyant, rises to the surface and becomes active

Ah, that's the part I missed. I read the article, but that "rise to the surface" part didn't register.

Thanks for being a gentleman about it and not pointing out the deficiency in my reading comprehension.

Re:I make these

[ColdWetDog]

Mr. Lovecraft? Haven't you got the dates confused? I guess I'm not too surprised, you being dead for quite some time.

Security

[AmiMoJo]

These things will need some kind of command and control interface. It will have to be deployed for years, decades perhaps. If anyone finds a security vulnerability they get to own a global botnet of actual robots. Considering drones have already proven prone to hacking I'd be a little bit concerned about this.

Re:Security

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Maybe a list of one-time pads kept securely in the DoD? I could definetely see value in being able to secure a coastline by sailing around dumping a load of smart mines armed with supercavitating torpedos and advanced sensors with the ability to tell friend from foe. Or even better, send a sub around an enemy's coastline and drop them invisibly, break in case of war. Instant blockade! Given how important control of the ocean is, this could well be an overwhelming advantage.

They've done this already

[drinkypoo]

They're called mines

Not all that novel

[argStyopa]

Sure, the ongoing concept of robots that can do something eventually is specifically novel, but the idea of submerging (concealing) something in the ocean for later activation and use is the old idea of captor mines - a concept at least 50-60 years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_60_CAPTOR

Their concept is little more than a replacement of the torpedo/warhead with a robotic intelligence-gathering module.

Re:Not all that novel

[icebike]

Their concept is little more than a replacement of the torpedo/warhead with a robotic intelligence-gathering module.

A robotic intelligence-gathering module that lies inert at 4000 feet deep doing nothing until you need an aerial reconnaissance platform in some remote corner of the globe. At which time you trigger it remotely, if floats to the surface, launches a balloon or remotely piloted aircraft with satellite up-link capabilities.

Somehow I think that's reasonably novel.

You've managed to totally misread TFA. There is no plan to have automated munitions deployed. These are not autonomous area denial weapons.

Re:Not terribly original

[hughbar]

Or the Godwhale: http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2005/02/review_the_godwhale_by_tj_bass/ why don't they just build that? Looks like fun to me...

How do they tell friend from foe

[rossdee]

especially at some future date.

Land mines also have this problem

Re:How do they tell friend from foe

[JustNiz]

Modern sea mines are programmed with target profiles based on passive audio and magnetic signatures.
They can not only be programmed to single out a specific class of vessel, but even a single vessel within a class.

Re:How do they tell friend from foe

[tragedy]

Accepted by the deployer, usually not the deployee. Then the deployers often end up surprised that some of the deployees carry a grudge about the whole thing.

Please don't do it

[dave69]

Dear America, please don't mine the entire ocean with giant robotic sea mines, just because you can. signed, the rest of the world

Activation code:

[PPH]

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"

Re:Swarm

[icebike]

READ TFA.

These are not weapon platforms.