Sperm whales spend, on average, 10 minutes of every hour on the surface, presenting challenges for researchers studying them. | Source: Amanda Cotton/Project CETI

In the chilly waters off the New England coast, researchers from the Cetacean Translation Initiative, Project CETI, can spend hours searching and waiting for an elusive sperm whale to surface. During the minutes the whales spend above water, the researchers need to gather as much information as possible before the animals dive back beneath the surface for long periods.

With one of the widest global distributions of any marine mammal species, these whales are difficult to track down, and even more difficult to learn from. Project CETI aims to use robotics and artificial intelligence to decode the vocalizing of sperm whales. It recently released research about how it tracks down sperm whales across the wide ocean.

“The ocean and the natural habitat of the whales is this vast place where we don’t have a lot of infrastructure, so it’s hard to build infrastructure that will always be able to observe the whales,” said Stephanie Gil, an assistant professor of Computer Science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and an advisor on the project.

The project brings together some of the world’s leading scientists in biology, linguistics, robotics, and more. The founder of Project CETI, David Gruber, estimated that it’s one of the largest multi-disciplinary research projects active today.

“Project CETI was formed in March 2020, and we’re now over 50 scientists across eight different disciplines,” he said. “I think we’re over 15 institutions, which I believe puts us as one of the most interdisciplinary, large-scale science projects that’s ever been conducted. It’s incredibly rewarding to see so many disciplines working together.”

Project CETI shares latest research

The researchers at the nonprofit organization have developed a reinforcement learning framework that uses autonomous drones to find sperm whales and predict where they will surface. The paper, published in Science Robotics, said it’s possible to predict when and where a whale may surface using various sensor data and predictive models of sperm whale dive behavior.

This new study involved various sensing devices, such as Project CETI aerial drones with very high frequency (VHF) signal sensing capability that use signal phase along with the drone’s motion to emulate an “antenna array in the air” for estimating the direction of pings from CETI’s on-whale tags.

“There are two basic advantages of [VHF signals]. One is that they are really low power, so they can operate for a really, really long time in the field, like months or even years. So, once those small beacons are deployed on the tag, you don’t have to really replace the batteries,” said Ninad Jadhav, a co-author on the paper and a robotics and engineering Ph.D. student at Harvard University.

“The second thing is these signals that these tags transmit, the VHF, are very high-frequency signals,” he added. “They can be detected at really long ranges.”

“That’s a really huge advantage because we never know when the whales will surface or where they will surface, but if they have been tagged before, then you can sense, for example, simple information such as the direction of the signal,” Jadhav told The Robot Report. “You can deploy an algorithm on the robot to detect that, and that gives us an advantage of finding where the whales are on the surface.”

Sperm whales present unique challenges for data collection

From left to right: Stephanie Gil, Sushmita Bhattacharya, and Ninad Jadhav. | Source: Stu Rosner

“Sperm whales are only on the surface for about 10 minutes every hour,” said Gil. “Other than that, they’re diving pretty deep in the ocean, so it’s hard to access information about what the whales are actually doing. That makes them somewhat elusive for us and for science.”

“Even we humans have certain patterns day to day. But if you’re actually out observing whales on a particular day, their behavior is not going to exactly align with the models, no matter how much data you’re using to make those models right. So it’s very difficult to really predict with precision when they might be coming up,” she continued.

“You can imagine, if [the scientists] out on the water for days and days, only having a few encounters with the whales, we’re not being that efficient. So this is to increase our efficiency,” Gruber told The Robot Report.

Once the Project CETI researchers can track down the whales, they must gather as much information as possible during the short windows of time sperm whales spend on the surface.

“Underwater data collection is quite challenging,” said Sushmita Bhattacharya, a co-author on the paper and a computer science and robotics Ph.D. student at Harvard University. “So, what is easier than underwater data collection is to have data collected when they’re at the surface. We can leverage drones or shallow hydrophones and collect as much data as possible.”

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Developing the AVATARS framework

At the center of the research is the Autonomous Vehicles for Whale Tracking And Rendezvous by Remote Sensing, or AVATARS framework. AVATARS is the first co-development of VHF sensing and reinforcement learning decision-making for maximizing the rendezvous of robots and whales at sea.

“We tried to build up a model which would kind of mimic [sperm whale] behavior,” Bhattacharya said of AVATARS. “We do this based on the current information that we gather from the sparse data set.”

Being able to predict when and where the whales will surface allowed the researchers to design algorithms for the most efficient route for a drone to rendezvous with—or encounter—a whale at the surface. Designing these algorithms where challenging on many levels, the researchers said.

“Probably the hardest thing is the fact that it is such an uncertain problem. We don’t have certainty at all in [the whales’] positions when they’re underwater, because you can’t track them with GPS when they’re underwater,” Gil said. “You have to think of other ways of trying to track them, for example, by using their acoustic signals and an angle of arrival to their acoustic signals that give you a rough idea of where they are.”

“Ultimately, these algorithms are routing algorithms. So you’re trying to route a team of robots to be at a particular location in the environment, in the world, at a certain given time when it’s necessary to be there,” she told The Robot Report. “So this is analogous to something like rideshare.”

Before bringing the algorithms into the real world with real whales, the team tested them in a controlled environment with devices the team put together to mimic whales.

We mimicked the whale using an engineered whale,” recalled Bhattacharya. “So basically we used a speed boat, and it had a loud engine. We used that engine noise to mimic the whale vocalization, and we had it move to mimic whale motion. And then we used that as our ground test.”

Project CETI tests AVATARS in the real world

A customized off-the-shelf drone flying to deploy a whale tag developed by Project CETI researchers. | Source: Project CETI

“Every day was a challenge when we were out on the boat, because this was for me, and my co-author Sushmita, the first time we were deploying real autonomous robots from a boat in the middle of the sea trying to collect some information,” Jadhav said.

“One of the major challenges of working in this environment was the noise in the sensor,” he continued. “As opposed to running experiments in the lab environment, which is more controlled, there are fewer sources of noise that impact your experiments or your sensor data”

“The other key challenge was deploying the drone itself from the board,” noted Jadhav. “I remember one instance where this was probably the first or second day of the second expedition that we went on last November, and I had the drone ready. It had the payload. It was waterproof”

“I had already run experiments here in Boston locally, where I had an estimate of how long the drone would fly with the payload. And then we were out on the boat running some initial tests, and the drone took off,” he said. “It was fine, it was doing its thing, and within a minute of it collecting data, there was a sudden gust of wind. The drone just lost control and crashed in the water.”

The team also had to try to predict and react to whale behavior when performing field tests.

“Our algorithm was designed to handle sensor data from a single whale, but what we ended up seeing is that there were four whales together, who were socializing,” Jadhav said. “They were diving and then surfacing at the same time. So, this was tricky, because then it becomes really hard for us on the algorithm side to understand which whale is sending which acoustic signal and which one we are tracking.”

Team tries to gather data without disturbing wildlife

While Project CETI works closely with sperm whales and other sea life that might be around when the whales surface, it aims to leave the whales undisturbed during data collection.

“The main concern that we care about is that even if we fail, we should not harm the whales,” Bhattacharya said. “So we have to be very careful about respecting the boundaries of those animals. That’s why we are looking at a rendezvous radius. Our goal is to go near the whale and not land on it.”

“Being minimally invasive and invisible is a key part of Project CETI,” said Gruber. “[We’re interested in] how to collect this information without interacting directly with the whale.”

This is why the team works mostly with drones that won’t disturb sea life and with specially developed tags that latch onto the whales and collect data. The CETI team eventually collects these tags, and the valuable data they contain, after they fall off the whales.

“A lot of times, people might think of robotics and autonomy as a scary thing, but this is a really important project to showcase that robots can be used to extend the reach of humans and help us understand our world better,” Gil told The Robot Report.

Project CETI aims to decode whale communications

This latest research is just one step in Project CETI’s overarching goal to decode sperm whale vocalizations. In the short term, the organization plans to ramp up data collection, which will be crucial for the project’s long-term goals.

“Once we have all the algorithms worked out, a future outlook is one where we might have, for example, drone ports in the sea that can deploy robots with sensors around the clock to observe whales when they’re available for observation,” Gil said.

“We envision a team of drones that will essentially meet or visit the whales at the right place, at the right time,” Jadhav said. “So whenever the whales surface, you essentially have a kind of autonomous drone, or autonomous robot, very close to the whale to collect information such as visual information or even acoustic if the drone is equipped with that.”

Outside of Project CETI, organizations could use AVATARS to further protect sperm whales in their natural environments. For example, this information could be used to reroute ships away from sperm whale hot spots, reducing the odds of a ship colliding with a pod of sperm whales.

“The idea is that if we understand more about the wholes, more about the whale communities, more about their social structures, then this will also enable and motivate conservation projects and understanding of marine life and how it needs to be protected,” Gil said.

In addition, the researchers said they could apply these methods to other sea mammals that vocalize.

“Here at Project CETI, we’re concerned about sperm whales, but I think this can be generalized to other marine mammals, because a lot of marine mammals vocalize, including humpback whales, other types of whales, and dolphins,” Bhattacharya said.

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Principal researcher Dr. Yongjin Kim (right) and senior researcher Dr. Young-ki Kim (left) from the Department of Reliability at KIMM, developed an automated mooring system. | Source: the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials

The Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials, or KIMM, has developed an automated mooring system to enhance the safety and efficiency of docking operations for autonomous vessels. The institute designed the system to overcome the limitations of conventional wire-based mooring methods. KIMM said it expects the innovation to be commercially available by 2025.

“This automated mooring system represents a key advancement in the safe docking of autonomous vessels and will play a pivotal role in the development of smart port infrastructure,” stated Dr. Yongjin Kim, principal researcher in the Department of Reliability at KIMM. “We expect this solution to set a new standard in operational safety and efficiency across the marine industry.”

The Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials is a non-profit government-funded research institute under the Ministry of Science and Information and Communication Technology. Since its foundation in 1976, KIMM has contributed to South Korea’s economic growth by researching and developing key technologies in machinery and materials, conducting reliability evaluations, and commercializing products.

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KIMM aims to make the mooring process safer, faster

Previously, workers secured vessels to the port manually using thick mooring lines. This method required high tensile strength, depending on the ship’s size and weight. If the wire broke, there was a risk of accidents, and the manual mooring process demanded substantial manpower and time.

KIMM said its automated mooring system directly addresses these challenges. It uses vacuum suction pads for secure attachment and a flexible, four degree-of-freedom hydraulic system for automated control.

The new technology can streamline the mooring process, increasing both speed and accuracy while reducing accident risks and labor needs, according to the researchers.

The actual Fixture for quantitative evaluation of suction force. Source: KIMM

Korean team receives recognition, prepares for commercialization

Dr. Yongjin Kim led the team at KIMM under President Seog-Hyeon Ryu. Dr. Young-ki Kim served as a senior researcher.

The institute‘s project was conducted under the “Development of Smart Port-Autonomous Ship linkage Technology” initiative, supported by Korea’s Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries. For its innovation and impact, the technology has been recognized by the Korea Federation of Mechanical Engineering Societies as one of “Korea’s Top 10 Mechanical Technologies of the Year.”

The final performance will be verified at sea in 2025, after which the technology development will be completed, including efforts to commercialize the system.

The automated ship-mooring platform, from concept to manufactured product. Source: KIMM

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ANELLO offers an evaluation kit for its navigation and positioning system. Source: ANELLO Photonics

Self-driving vehicles, mobile robots, and drones need multiple sensors for safe and reliable operation, but the cost and bulk of those sensors have posed challenges for developers and manufacturers. ANELLO Photonics Inc. yesterday said it has closed its Series B funding round for its SiPhOG inertial navigation system, or INS.

“This investment not only validates our SiPhOG technology and products in the marketplace, but will [also] allow us to accelerate our manufacturing and product development as we continue to push the boundaries and leadership for navigation capabilities and performance to our customers who want solutions for GPS-denied environments,” stated Dr. Mario Paniccia, co-founder and CEO of ANELLO Photonics.

Founded in 2018, ANELLO has developed SiPhOG — Silicon Photonics Optical Gyroscope — based on integrated photonic system-on-chip (SoC) technology. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company said it has more than 28 patents, with 44 pending. Its technologies also include a sensor-fusion engine using artificial intelligence.

“I spent 22 years at Intel and started this field of silicon photonics, which is the idea of building optical devices out of standard silicon processing, mostly focused on the data center,” recalled Paniccia. “Mike Horton, my co-founder, was a sensor gyro expert who started a company called Crossbow coming out of UC Berkeley.”

“Everyone doing autonomy was saying lidar and radar, but customers told Mike that if we could build an integrated photonic chip, they’d be very interested,” he told The Robot Report. “If you look at fiber gyros, they work great but are big, bulky, and expensive.”

“The stuff on our phones are MEMS [micro-electromechanical systems]-based today, which is not very accurate and is very sensitive to temperature, vibration, and EM interference,” Paniccia explained. “With the the same concept as a fiber gyro — the idea of light going around a coil, and you measure the phase based on rotation — we integrated all those components on a single chip, added a little laser, and put electronics around it, and you now get SiPhOG, which fits in the palm of your hand.”

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SiPhOG combines compactness and precision

SiPhOG brings high-precision into an integrated silicon photonics platform, claimed ANELLO. It is based on the interferometric fiber-optic gyroscope (FOG) but is designed for compactness, said Paniccia.

“It’s literally 2 by 5 mm,” he said. “On that chip, we have all the components — the splitters, the couplers, the phase modulators, and the delay lines. We measure about 50 nano-radians of signal, so a tiny, tiny signal, but we measure it very accurately.”

The system also has a non-ASIC, two-sided electronics board with an analog lock-in amplifier, a temperature controller, and an isolator, Paniccia said. It has none of the drawbacks of MEMS and uses 3.3 volts, he added.

Paniccia said the SiPhOG unit includes an optical gyro, triple-redundant MEMS, accelerometers, and magnetometers. It also has two GPS chips and dual antennas and is sealed to be waterproof.

The ANELLO IMU+ is designed for harsh environments including in construction, robotics, mining, trucking, and defense. Source: ANELLO

Navigation system ready for multiple markets

Autonomous systems can work with ANELLO’s technology and the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) for navigation, positioning, and motion tracking for a range of applications, said the company.

“We’re shipping to customers now in orchards, where the leaves come in, and the water in them essentially acts like a tunnel, absorbing GPS,” Paniccia said. “Our algorithm says, ‘I’m losing GPS, so weigh the navigation algorithm more to the optical gyro.’ You want the robot to stay within a tenth of a meter across a distance of half a mile. Long-distance, we’re looking at 100 km of driving without GPS with less than 100-m lateral error.”

In addition, SiPhOG is built for scalability and cost-effectiveness.

“VC friends tell me that automakers are putting six lidar systems on a car, and each one is $10,000 each. It’s never going to get to mass market,” Paniccia said. “We have an optical technology for land, air, and sea. And whether that land vehicle is for agriculture or construction, or in the longer term, trucking or autonomous cars, we can do it.”

“You can literally tape SiPhOG to a dashboard and plug it into the cigarette lighter,” he said. “We have self-alignment correction, and within 15 minutes, you can have GPS-denied navigation capability. We’re also shipping this system for indoor robots like in construction.”

“If I put three SiPhOGs in a cube, I can have the same performance but at one-fifth the size and weight and a quarter of the power for precision in three dimensions,” said Paniccia. “That’s exciting for drones and maritime.”

Investors to accelerate ANELLO 

Lockheed Martin, Catapult Ventures, and One Madison Group co-led ANELLO’s unspecified Series B round. New Legacy, Build Collective, Trousdale Ventures, In-Q-Tel (IQT), K2 Access Fund, Purdue Strategic Ventures, Santuri Ventures, Handshake Ventures, Irongate Capital, and Mana Ventures also participated. 

“We’re committed to fostering the art of the possible with investments in cutting edge technologies, including advancements in inertial navigation that have the potential to enhance autonomous operations in GPS-denied environments,” said Chris Moran, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Ventures. “Our continued investment in ANELLO reflects our mission to accelerate technologies that can ultimately benefit national security.”

ANELLO said it plans to use its latest funding to continue developing and deploying its technology. The company has worked with the U.S. Department of Defense to optimize its algorithms against jamming or spoofing.

“Every week, there’s an article about a commercial flight or defense-related mission getting GPS jammed, like thousands of flights to and from Europe affected by suspected Russian jamming,” noted Tony Fadell, founder of Nest and a principal at investor Build Collective. “GPS has become a single point of failure because it’s too easily compromised with various jamming and spoofing techniques.”

“ANELLO’s proven and commercially available optical gyroscope is the only navigational tool that can take over, [offering] precision over long periods of time, the size of a golf ball, low-power, low-cost, that’s immune to shock and vibration,” he added. “ANELLO will save lives in the air, on the road, and over water.”

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The Certus Mini series promises compact navigation for autonomous systems. Source: Advanced Navigation.

Field robots, autonomous vehicles, and aerial drones require reliable and compact navigational systems. Advanced Navigation this week announced that it expanded Certus range with the new Mini series.

Available in three variants, the Certus Mini series includes the GNSS-aided Certus Mini D and Certus Mini N inertial navigation system (INS). Meanwhile, the Certus Mini A functions as an attitude and heading reference system (AHRS).

Weighing no more than 55 g (1.9 oz.), the products offer high performance and cost efficiency for their weight and size, said Advanced Navigation.

“Manufacturers and system integrators often face trade-offs between performance, size, cost, and weight,” noted Chris Shaw, CEO of Advanced Navigation. “The Certus Mini series is a testament these attributes do not need to conflict with one another.”

“For customers deploying land-based vehicles, this value-driven breakthrough lowers their entry barrier to precise and reliable navigation,” he added. “It also unlocks new possibilities for those using lightweight airborne platforms, such as drones, where every gram counts towards flight efficiency and power consumption.”

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Advanced Navigation designs for future flexibility

“Designed with flexibility in mind, the series is easily integrated into existing and new system builds with simple plug-and-play connectivity, minimizing development time and costs,” stated Shaw. “This adaptability, paired with its performance and size, makes the Mini series a powerful addition to the already versatile Certus range.”

Sydney, Australia-based Advanced Navigation shared the following specifications for its new systems:

• Dual-antenna INS – Leading the series, the Certus Mini D features dual-antenna GNSS (global navigation satellite system) heading for accurate heading, position, and velocity. At a maximum weight of 55 grams, it offers a dual-antenna INS in a lightweight and compact size.
• Multiband GNSS receiver – By operating on the L1/L5 multi-constellation GNSS, the Certus Mini series offers interference immunity, position accuracy, and multipath resistance in urban environments, such as near tall buildings, tree canopies, and canyons.
• Software-enabled hardware – The series includes Advanced Navigation’s algorithmic technology. “This software-enabled hardware delivers navigation data superior to outputs based on traditional filter methods, offering new levels of performance for miniature INS in GNSS-challenged environments,” claimed the company.

The quality of the Certus Mini series is ensured through in-house manufacturing. Source: Advanced Navigation

Certus Mini Dual-antenna navigation

• 0.1 ° roll and pitch
• 0.1 ° heading (GNSS)
• 10 mm RTK (real-time kinematic) positioning
• 1,000 Hz update rate

Certus Mini Navigation, single antenna

• 0.1 ° roll and pitch
• 0.2 ° heading (velocity)
• 10 mm RTK positioning
• 1,000 Hz update rate

Certus Mini Attitude and heading reference system (AHRS)

• 0.1 ° roll and pitch
• 0.8 ° heading (magnetic)
• 1,000 Hz update rate

Certus Mini offers ease of integration

Advanced Navigation said the Certus Mini series can be easily integrated into legacy systems and new builds, reducing installation or upgrade time and minimizing costs. The company said this can accelerate navigation deployment across diverse applications:

• Geospatial surveying – Certus Mini can provide accurate positioning and attitude without weighing down a drone, said Advanced Navigation. This enables new applications for surveying environments across open-pit mines, construction sites, urban areas, and critical infrastructure.
• Agriculture – In a new era of “farming-as-a-service” (FaaS), Certus Mini can be designed into agricultural robots and equipment to assist with a diverse range of tasks. These include aerial spraying, weed detection and localization, monitoring crop health, inspecting moisture levels, creating field maps, autonomous pruning, and grass cutting.
• Open-pit mining – Advanced Navigation said Certus Mini is suitable for surface drilling OEMs and integrators seeking precise rig alignment. The system can provide precise alignment even in deep pits where multipath errors occur, and its ruggedized design delivers reliability in harsh mining conditions, it said.
• Asset tracking – Certus Mini can be used to track and monitor assets for a range of industries, such as mining, facilities management, manufacturing, construction, commercial fleets, automotive, and oil and gas.

The Certus Mini line is designed to add precision to multiple applications. Source: Advanced Navigation

In-house manufacturing enables rapid product delivery

By leveraging capabilities in software-enabled hardware, Advanced Navigation claimed that its navigation and autonomous systems deliver “exceptional performance across land, air, sea, and space applications where GPS is unreliable.”

By manufacturing all systems in-house, Advanced Navigation said its vertical integration framework streamlines development, enhances quality control, and ensures agility in responding to customer demand. The company added that it uses machine learning and advanced quality-control mechanisms to maintain the reliability and longevity of the components integrated into its navigation systems.

The Certus Mini series is now available for purchase in OEM and ruggedized forms.

Advanced Navigation noted that the series will replace its Orientus and Spatial legacy systems. Customer support will continue for Orientus and Spatial, and the company recommends the Certus Mini Series for new builds.

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The Saildrone Voyager is a 10 m uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) designed for seafloor mapping at depths up to 300 m. | Source: Saildrone

Two Saildrone Voyager uncrewed surface vehicles, or USVs, have surveyed 1,500 square nautical miles (5,144.8 sq. km) in a north-central area of the Gulf of Maine. The marine robots mapped areas that had never been mapped in high resolution.

This expedition supports deep-sea coral surveys and other missions of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 

The Gulf of Maine, which is bordered by Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, as well as the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, is a productive and dynamic marine environment. Its waters are home to a diverse array of economically important fisheries, including Atlantic cod, herring, lobster, and scallops.

In addition, the gulf houses unique underwater habitats, including kelp forests, eelgrass beds, and deep-sea coral. All of these may provide shelter and breeding grounds for many marine organisms. 

Saildrone Inc. said it creates uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) that can cost-effectively gather data for science, fisheries, weather forecasting, and more. The Alameda, Calif.-based company uses autonomous vessels to deliver observations and insights about activity above and below the ocean surface.

The Surveyor, Explorer, and Voyager USVs are powered by renewable wind and solar energy. They continuously feed data in real time to drive more informed decision-making across maritime security, trade, and sustainability, said Saildrone. 

Why is the Gulf of Maine so important?

In addition to its diverse wildlife, the Gulf of Maine’s seafloor has a complex topography of sea basins, shallow banks, and steep slopes. However, high-resolution mapping data has been extremely limited, especially in deeper waters. 

The Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) generally extends from the coast to 200 nautical miles (370.4 km) offshore. This is the maritime zone for which a coastal country has jurisdiction over natural resources.

Over 4 million sq. mi. (10.3 million sq. km), the U.S. EEZ is larger than all 50 states combined, yet 48% remains unmapped and unexplored, according to Saildrone. Accurate ocean depths and topography are essential for resource management and responsibly developing and maintaining coastal infrastructure.

To improve understanding of the seafloor, the federal government established the “Strategy for Mapping, Exploring, and Characterizing the United States Exclusive Economic Zone” (NOMEX). The Gulf of Maine is one of the highest mapping priorities due to its significant commercial fisheries supported by diverse habitats and the potential to support wind energy.

In particular, good mapping data is necessary to guide the search for deep-sea coral, which serves as a habitat for important fisheries, Saildrone noted.

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Saildrone Voyager maps Gulf of Main basins

Saildrone’s mission primarily focused on the Jordan and Georges Basins, at depths of up to 300 m (984.2 ft.). The company’s data revealed a complex and varied underwater landscape, reflecting its glacial history and dynamic oceanographic processes. 

“The Saildrone Voyagers are filling in a substantial gap in seafloor data in the Gulf of Maine,” said Heather Coleman, a researcher in the Deep Sea Coral Research and Technology Program under the NOAA Fisheries Office of Habitat Conservation.

“NOAA and partners are very interested in better understanding habitats in the region that may support fish production,” she added. “These high-resolution seafloor maps will inform future surveying and modeling efforts, as well as aid in the New England Fishery Management Council’s (NEFMC) fishery management decisions.”

Voyager is a 10-m (33-ft.) USV designed specifically for near-shore ocean and lakebed mapping. It carries a payload of science sensors and mapping echo sounders, as well as navigation and communications equipment.

Saildrone said Voyager can deliver long-duration International Hydrographic Organization (IHO)-compliant multibeam mapping surveys and ocean data collection. While the company’s USVs are primarily wind and solar-powered, Voyager also carries a high-efficiency electric motor for speed and maneuverability in light winds. 

Undersea data has multiple uses

The multibeam and backscatter data collected in the Gulf of Maine will inform new species-distribution models, which was previously not possible with the lack of high-resolution seafloor information. These new maps will also help update nautical charts and aid navigation, filling important gaps in bathymetric coverage.

“This is the first successful demonstration of Saildrone Voyager mapping capabilities, pushing the envelope of what is possible using autonomous systems for shallow to mid-depth EEZ mapping,” said Brian Connon, vice president of ocean mapping at Saildrone. “Its state-of-the-art Norbit multibeam echo sounder, combined with near-silent operations and classification from the American Bureau of Shipping, make Saildrone’s Voyager the USV of choice for near-shore mapping.”

“These capabilities can be applied for any number of missions, from habitat exploration to safety of navigation to site characterization for offshore wind,” he asserted.

Saildrone has been operating autonomous data collection missions for ocean research, seafloor mapping, and maritime security since 2015. To date, it has built more than 140 USVs across the three Explorer, Voyager, and Surveyor classes.

The Saildrone fleet has already spent more than 42,000 days at sea and sailed more than 1.3 million nm (240,000 km) from the High North to the Southern Ocean. Earlier this month, Saildrone began a mission to map 29,300 sq. nm (10,000 sq. km) of the Cayman Islands’ EEZ.

Image of data collected by Saildrone showing the varied topography in the Gulf of Maine. | Source: Saildrone

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The Olympics are the ultimate showcase for human endurance, speed, and skill. The equipment that the athletes use and the venues in which they compete continue to evolve every four years. Innovation enables people from around the world to continually push the boundaries of competition in their respective sports.

In Olympic sailing, all of the boats and sails are identical. All of the athletes use the same equipment so the differentiator is the winners’ skill and ability to read the wind.

A sailing course is defined on the water with marks, floating buoys that the sailors race around. These marks have historically been anchored in place. 

Each mark rounding is an opportunity for the race committee (RC) to modify the course, as the wind shifts throughout the race. With anchored marks, the RC needs to motor over to the mark, pull the anchor, and reposition the mark at a new spot. This happens before the racers arrive or before the next race starts.

Robots ready, set, go at the Olympics

At the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, robotic marks are being employed for the first time. These robotics marks are inflatable and have an underwater hull, battery pack, and thrusters that make them mobile on top of the water.

The RC commands each mark to a GPS waypoint, and the robotic marks hold their position at the waypoint without needing to be anchored to the sea or lake floor.

The race buoys are controlled via the RaceDesigner web app. | Credit: Effetto Venturi

There are several providers of autonomous sailing markers. The company providing the robotic marks for the 2024 Olympics is Switzerland-based Effetto Venturi.

The Gipsy Buoy is one of the smaller robotic buoys on the market, but it is the right size for the boaters, windsurfers, and kite surfers competing in this year’s Olympics. The races are all taking place on the Mediterranean Sea on the French Riviera. 

The Gipsy Buoy measures 1.4 x 1.25 m (4.6 x 4.1 ft.), can operate in wind up to 30 knots (34.5 mph), in a max current of 3.5 knots (3.9 mph). It can easily be pulled out of the water for transport to from the harbor to the race site.

The Gipsy buoy is small but suitable for Olympic class racing. | Credit: Angela Trawoeger

Americas Cup to use MarkSetBot

Another robotic buoy company, MarkSetBot, is being used for the 2024 Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup Match Race event. The America’s Cup boats are up to four times larger than the Olympic-class boats, they are faster, and the courses are longer.

The MarkSetBot is a larger-scale buoy, making it able to handle the higher wind speeds, waves, and offshore conditions in the Americas Cup events. The MarkSetBot can also be seen by the America’s Cup sailors from farther away.

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The Spyglass and Cutlass ASVs combine hardware, software, and AI to accomplish critical maritime missions. Source: Saronic

Saronic Technologies last week said it had raised $175 million in Series B funding, placing its valuation at $1 billion. The designer and manufacturer of autonomous surface vessels, or ASVs, for defense missions said it plans to use the investment to accelerate its growth both domestically and internationally.

“We are creating an entirely new capability for the maritime domain, one that delivers naval power without the costs and delays of a shipyard,” stated Dino Mavrookas, CEO of Saronic. “As the future of naval warfare will rely on manned and unmanned teaming, we must build solutions that easily integrate into the existing fleet and can be produced at scale to meet any emerging threat. We are grateful to our investment partners who believe so strongly in Saronic’s ability to meet that need.”

Founded in 2022, Saronic said it is “redefining maritime superiority for the U.S. Navy and its allies by delivering the most effective and advanced ASVs at the speed and scale needed to meet the rapidly growing needs of the Joint Force.” The Austin, Texas-based company claimed that its robotic vessels can serve as a “force multiplier” for the existing fleet, working alongside crewed systems and allowing naval forces to go farther and do more with less risk to life and mission.

ASVs extend navy reach while reducing risk

Saronic’s lineup of ASVs includes the 6-ft. (1.8-m) Spyglass, the 14-ft. (4.2-m) Cutlass, and Corsair, its largest model, which is currently in development and testing. Each vessel features integrated autonomous capabilities to meet customer requirements and can carry diverse payloads in communication- and GPS-denied environments.

The vertical integration of hardware and software, as well as the use of a modular open systems architecture (MOSA) provides interoperability at an attritable price point, according to Saronic. The company claimed that its ASVs provide cost-effective capabilities that help avoid putting human operators in harm’s way.

The use of automated vessels can also increase the survivability of the fleet and allow commanders to take risks that would be too high to take with crewed systems, Saronic said.

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Saronic investors drive military innovation

Saronic said its investors are committed to ensuring that the U.S. military maintains its decisive advantage in the face of an increasingly complex and competitive global threat landscape. The group supports the “integration of advanced technology and innovative capabilities that truly meet the needs of the warfighter,” it asserted.

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led Saronic’s Series B round, with participation from new and existing investors including including 8VC, Caffeinated Capital, Elad Gil, and NightDragon, among others.

“Our nation’s future depends on us continuing to build and deploy the best, most innovative technology” said Katherine Boyle, general partner at a16z. “Saronic is developing the solutions we need to protect the warfighter and stay ahead of our adversaries, and we are proud to support their continued growth.”

Saronic said it will further expand its in-house manufacturing capabilities to increase production of all its ASV models. The company will also continue research and development for new autonomous capabilities for naval and maritime forces. This will include increased technology and payload integration with government and commercial partners.

Internationally, Saronic plans to use its latest investment to expand its services to U.S. allies and partners in key markets.

“To deter China and other adversaries, the United States and our allies must bring intelligent, autonomous new capabilities to naval warfare,” said Alex Moore, partner at 8VC. “Saronic delivers these capabilities on a relevant scale and timeline, and [it] has enlisted the top engineers and operators in the industry.”

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Seatrec’s infiniTE float is a subsurface ocean profiling platform that uses new power-generation technology. | Source: Seatrec

Around 80% of the ocean floor remains uncharted today, and for good reason. The deep sea is an unforgiving environment. Between intense pressure, zero visibility, and extremely cold temperatures, individuals and organizations looking to shed some light on the area have massive challenges to overcome. 

Robots will likely be a key driver of this exploration, but they have their own limitations. One of the most pressing among these is power. Batteries in subsurface sensors often rely on solar energy or any other kind of renewable energy. This means when the batteries die, they’re either left dead in the water or recharged by a ship that can cost up to $50,000 a day to operate. 

Seatrec Inc. hopes to provide a new kind of power source using technology created at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California and licensed from the California Institute of Technology. The Vista, Calif.-based company said its technology can allow robots to work in the open ocean indefinitely and without any intervention. 

Yi Chao, the company’s founder and CEO, spent 15 years at JPL studying the ocean from space after earning his doctorate in ocean sciences. At NASA, he could see firsthand how difficult it is to access many of the world’s open oceans. 

“I really had an opportunity to know the challenges of underwater robotics, and especially energy, and settled on this particular bottleneck that I want to address,” Chao said.

NASA’s Aquarius instrument aboard the joint U.S. and Argentinian Satélite de Aplicaciones Científicas mapped the surface salinity of Earth’s oceans. To calibrate the instrument, a JPL team distributed robotic floats. The experience helped inspire Yi Chao’s invention of an inexhaustible power source. Credit: NASA

Robots to be powered by their environment

With the help of two JPL colleagues, funding from JPL, and then a JPL contract with the U.S. Navy, Chao set out to find a different kind of power source for subsea robots. The team is using phase-change material to generate power. 

Phase-change materials are substances that can transition between phases, usually between solid and liquid, at certain desirable temperatures. Chao’s team is taking advantage of the volume change that comes with a change in state to generate power. 

“We use the kinetic energy from that volume expansion to spin the motor and then turn the mechanical energy into electricity, and now you can recharge your battery,” said Chao.

This concept is similar to the way a steam engine works by using water’s expansion into steam to turn a motor. The solid-to-liquid transition, however, only creates about a 10% expansion. This means the team has to make the most of the small amount of energy the transition generates. This is why the method has been unused for so long. 

When used in a robot, the material’s temperature changes when the robot rises and falls through the ocean, something it will typically do anyway. When exploring the deepest parts of the ocean, robots still need to occasionally surface to determine their position via GPS and transmit the data they’ve collected to satellites. 

The team chose a common industry-grade, paraffin-family material with a melting point of around 50ºF, right between the typical ocean temperature of about 40ºF and the surface of around 70ºF. While this material is ideal for the average ocean temperatures, it can be swapped out to better fit different environments. 

Chao and his colleagues tested a prototype float at JPL in 2011 and then tested an underwater glider that operated under the same principle but could also move horizontally. Later, Chao exclusively licensed the invention from the California Institute of Technology, which manages JPL. He founded Seatrec in 2016. 

Seatrec sees a growing market for its technology

Seatrec is currently selling its first power module for diving floats to research labs, universities, government researchers, and the military. Chao said he expects a lot of growth in the market. Possible customers include:

• Communications companies that are interested in laying transoceanic internet cables
• Companies drilling for oil and gas, or building wind farms offshore
• Environmental conservation groups that want to learn more about the locations of marine habitats
• Companies managing offshore operations, including oil wells, wind turbines, and fish farms, that need underwater sensors to monitor conditions and equipment
• Any company laying cables or mining for rare-earth elements on the seafloor. These companies need to asses the local environments and wildlife before these operations.

Moving forward, Seatrec plans to commercialize a system to power underwater gliders using its solid-to-liquid phase-change technology.

The company also plans to develop a power station that would cycle a liquid-to-gas phase-change material through ocean depths. This could create an order of magnitude more energy, allowing users to recharge more robots at sea, it said.

Seatrec has a grant from the Navy to develop a power station on the Arctic ice, where it can take advantage of the difference between water temperatures and the colder air above the ice. 

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Elmo demonstrates its technologies in a gantry robot. Source: Elmo Motion Control

From industrial automation and healthcare applications to increasingly diverse use cases, robots need precise and reliable motion control. Elmo Motion Control Ltd., a global technology leader, plans to display its latest innovations at events across the Americas including this week’s Robotics Summit & Expo in Boston.

The company, which supports industrial and collaborative robots, as well as automated guided vehicles (AGVs), smart warehouse systems, remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), and dispensing products, will also exhibit next week at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston and Automate in Chicago.

“We eagerly anticipate exhibiting at these three industry events in three major U.S. cities in a whirlwind timeframe,” stated Elizabeth Victor, director of sales in the Americas at Elmo Motion Control. “We are thrilled to meet trade show visitors and showcase our comprehensive line of servo drives and our newest advanced innovations.”

“Our innovations boast outstanding capabilities, such as fully certified functional safety, and continue raising the industry’s technology bar,” she added. “We are particularly excited about showing a glimpse of the future with innovations significantly enhancing any machine’s performance.”

Platinum line includes Bassoon with functional safety

Platinum Bassoon Servo Drive. Source: Elmo Motion Control

Elmo Motion Control said its Platinum line of servo drives demonstrates its “commitment to innovation and excellence.” It includes the recently launched Platinum Bassoon, this line’s first AC drive, which includes the leading certified functional safety capabilities.

The Platinum Bassoon supports up to 10 amps at 230 volts and has up to 3.25 kW of continuous power. The drive is compatible with brushless, DC brush, linear motors, or voice coil, said the company.

At each show in May, Elmo is providing an opportunity to see its latest technologies. It will show its new multi-axis servo drives with full functional safety and the next-generation motion controller with artificial intelligence.

At Automate, visitors can see a collaborative robot with full functional safety and a life-sciences robot from Elmo customers Wyzo and Peak Robotics.

About Elmo and the Robotics Summit

Elmo Motion Control said it has been a motion-control technology leader for over 35 years, with millions of servo drives working 24/7 worldwide. The company‘s offerings range from design to delivery of servo drives, network-based multi-axis motion controllers, and integrated servo motors.

Elmo said all of its systems can be customized and configured using proprietary software tools for machines in any industry, such as semiconductors, lasers, robots, drones, industrial automation, extreme environments, and more. The company employs more than 350 people.

Its headquarters in Petah Tikva, Israel, and offices in the U.S., China, Germany, Italy, Korea, and Singapore, plus a manufacturing facility in Poland. Elmo has a worldwide distribution network. As of 2022, Elmo is a Bosch Rexroth company.

Elmo Motion Control will show its technologies at Booth 314 at the Robotics Summit & Expo on May 1 and 2. To schedule a one-on-one meeting, register here: https://www.elmomc.com/media/events/

The Robotics Summit & Expo, which will be in the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, will include keynotes and sessions with industry experts, more than 200 exhibitors, a MassRobotics Engineering Career Fair, and several networking opportunities. Registration is now open for the event.

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Advanced Navigation’s Hydrus micro autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) deployed. | Source: Advanced Navigation

Advanced Navigation is bringing humans closer to the ocean with Hydrus, a relatively small underwater drone. The company recently sent Hydrus to the depths of the Rottnest ship graveyard, located in the Indian Ocean and just off the coast of Western Australia. 

The Sydney, Australia-based developer of AI robotics and navigation technology said that upon seeing the gathered data, the team discovered a 210-ft. (64-m) shipwreck scattered across the sea floor. This means the wreck was more than twice the size of a blue whale. 

“We’ve found through all of our testing that Hydrus is very reliable, and it will complete its mission and come to the surface or come to its designated return point,” Alec McGregor, Advanced Navigation’s photogrammetry specialist, told The Robot Report. “And then you can just scoop it up with a net from the side of the boat.”

Robot can brave the ocean’s unexplored depths

Humans have only explored and charted 24% of the ocean, according to Advanced Navigation. The unexplored parts are home to more than 3 million undiscovered shipwrecks, and 1,819 recorded wrecks are lying off Western Australia’s shore alone.

These shipwrecks can hold keys to our understanding of past culture, history, and science, said the company.

The Rottnest graveyard is a particularly dense area for these abandoned ships. Beginning in the 1900s, the area became a burial ground for ships, naval vessels, aircraft, and secretive submarines. A majority of these wrecks haven’t been discovered because the depth ranges from 164 to 656 ft. (50 to 200 m). 

Traditionally, there are two ways of gathering information from the deep sea, explained McGregor. The first is divers, who have to be specially trained to reach the depths Advanced Navigation is interested in studying. 

“Some of the wrecks that we’ve been looking at are in very deep water, so 60 m [196.8 ft.] for this particular wreck, which is outside of the recreational diving limit,” McGregor said. “So, you actually have to go into tech diving.”

“And when you go deeper with all of this extra equipment, it tends to just increase the risks associated with going to depth,” he said. “So, you need to have special training, you need to have support vessels, and you also have to be down in the water for a long period of time.”

The second option is to use remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) or autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). While this method doesn’t involve putting people at risk, it can still be expensive. 

“Some of the drawbacks with using traditional methods include having to have big support vessels,” McGregor said. “And getting the actual ROVs in and out of the water sometimes requires a crane, whereas with the Hydrus, you can just chuck it off the side of the boat.”

“So, with Hydrus, you’re able to reduce the costs of operation,” he added. “You’re also able to get underwater data super easily and super quickly by just chucking a Hydrus off the boat. It can be operated with one person.”

Advanced Navigation uses ‘wet electronics’

One of the biggest challenges with underwater robotics, McGregor said, is keeping important electronics dry. Conventional ROVs do this with pressure chambers. 

“Traditional ROVs have big chambers which basically keep all the electronics dry,” he noted. “But from a mechanical point of view, if you want to go deeper, you need to have thicker walls so that they can resist the pressure at depth.”

“If you need thicker walls, that increases the weight of the robot,” said McGregor. “And if you increase the weight, but you still want the robot to be buoyant, you have to increase the size. It’s just this kind of spiral of increasing the size to increase the buoyancy.”

“What we’ve managed to do with Hydrus is we have designed pressure-tolerant electronics, and we use a method of actually having what we call ‘wet electronics,'” McGregor said. “This involves basically potting the electronics in a plastic material. And we don’t use it to keep the structural integrity of the robot. So we don’t need a pressure vessel because we’ve managed to protect our electronics that way.” 

Once it’s underwater, Hydrus operates fully autonomously. Unlike traditional ROVs, the system doesn’t require a tether to navigate underwater, and the Advanced Navigation team has limited real-time communication capabilities. 

“We do have very limited communication with Hydrus through acoustic communications,” McGregor said. “The issue with acoustic communications is that there’s not a lot of data that can be transferred. We can get data such as the position of Hydrus, and we can also send simple commands such as ‘abort mission’ or ‘hold position’ or ‘pause mission,’ but we can’t physically control it.”

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Hydrus provides high-resolution data

While Hydrus has impressive autonomous capabilities, it doesn’t find wrecks all on its own. In this case, McGregor said, Advanced Navigation worked closely with the Western Australian (WA) Museum to find the wreck.

The museum gave the company a rough idea of where a shipwreck could be. Then the team sent Hydrus on a reconnaissance mission to determine the wreck’s exact location. 

“When we got Hydrus back on board, we were able to offload all the data and reconstruct the mission based on the images and from that, we were then able to see where the shipwreck was,” McGregor said. “One of the good things about Hydrus is that we can actually get geo-referenced data onto the water with auxiliary systems that we have on the boat.”

Hydrus gathered 4K geo-referenced imagery and video footage. Curtin University HIVE, which specializes in shipwreck photogrammetry, used this data to rebuild a high-resolution 3D digital twin of the wreck. Ross Anderson, a curator at the WA Museum, closely examined the digital twin. 

Anderson found that the wreck was an over 100-year-old coal hulk from Fremantle Port’s bygone days. Historically, these old iron ships were used to service steamships in Western Australia. 

In the future, the team is interested in exploring other shipwrecks, like the SS Koombana, an ultra-luxury passenger ship. The ship ferried more than 150 passengers before it vanished into a cyclone in 1912.

However, Advanced Navigation isn’t just interested in gaining information from shipwrecks. 

“Another thing we’re doing with a lot of this data is actually coral reef monitoring. So we’re making 3D reconstructions of coral reefs, and we’re working with quite a few customers to do this,” McGregor said.  

Hydrus reduced the surveying costs for this particular mission by up to 75%, according to the company. This enabled the team to conduct more frequent and extensive surveying of the wreck in a shorter period of time. 

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Version 1.0 of the EELS robot during field testing in Alberta, Canada, in September 2023. | Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech

In a collaboration that was 17 years in the making, Carnegie Mellon University, or CMU, researchers worked with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory to create an autonomous snake-like robot. The Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor, or EELS, is a self-propelled robot. NASA scientists said they hope to use EELS to search for signs of life in the ocean beneath the icy crust of Saturn’s Enceladus moon.

EELS was developed at NASA’s JPL with collaboration from Carnegie Mellon, Arizona State University, and the University of California, San Diego. Howie Choset, CMU’s Kavčić-Moura Professor of Computer Science in the School of Computer Science, Matt Travers, a senior systems scientist at the school’s Robotics Institute (RI), and Andrew Orekhov, a project scientist in the RI, contributed to the project. 

The resulting robot can navigate extreme terrains, including ice, sand, rocks, cliff walls, deep craters, underground lava tubes, and glaciers. The CMU team developed the controllers for the robot. In addition, an early prototype used modules developed by HEBI Robotics, a university spinout that Choset founded in 2014. 

“Enceladus is essentially covered with water,” Choset told The Robot Report. “But it’s underneath the rock that forms the moon. In the South Pole, the rock and ice are about 2 km [1.2 mi.] thick, and there are geysers that spit the water out from the underground ocean into space. So, there’s a belief that if you fly a spacecraft to Enceladus, land, and then get into the geysers, you may be able to swim in this extraterrestrial ocean.” 

EELS snake robot built for space applications

“So, we’ve been working on snake robots for a very long time,” Choset said. “And what’s nice about snake robots in general, is they can use their many joints and their slender physique to thread through tightly packed volumes and get to locations that people in machinery otherwise can’t access.”

This makes snake robots good for many applications, including search and rescue, he said. In this case, EELS will use these capabilities to wriggle into cracks in Enceladus’ layer of ice. EELS stands out from other snake robots because of its “wheels.” These wheels look more like corkscrews than traditional wheels, said Choset. 

“When those corkscrews rotate, they kind of penetrate the ice a little bit, but also gives the mechanism the ability to roll forward,” he explained. “So the robot has the ability to propel itself, not only with the snake-like motion but also these corkscrew wheels that allow it to traverse icy surfaces really quickly.” 

Choset said these wheels will help the robot to better move across ice until it can find a crack or geyser hole to crawl into.

“The autonomy that we developed is the robot’s ability to get into a tight space, and then use the constraints of that tight space to propel itself forward,” he said. 

But that’s only half of the battle. Once the EELS robot has found its way into one of these holes, it has to be able to swim through Enceladus’ ocean to search for potential signs of life. Choset’s team already had experience building swimming snake robots. 

“We built a variety of snake robots, but the one we most recently built was a swimming one called HUMRS, which stands for ‘Hardened Underwater Modular Robot Snake,'” Choset said. The CMU team was able to apply what it learned while developing HUMRS to this project with NASA JPL. 

Connections bring the right people on board

Choset’s long-held connections within the industry brought him onto the EELS project, along with his expertise in designing snake-like robots. 

“I went to Caltech as a graduate student, and JPL was part of Caltech,” he said. “So, whenever there’s an opportunity to work with JPL, the Jet Propulsion Lab, I jump on it, because it reminds me of my young graduate student days.” 

It wasn’t just the chance to work with JPL that brought Choset on board, however. He was recruited by Rohan Thakkar, a researcher who worked in Choset’s group 17 years ago as a high school student. 

“I think it’s important for people to realize that it’s not just a bunch of engineers getting together to build some mechanism as if they’re reading from a recipe or a cookbook,” Choset said. “Engineering is very important, but I want people to recognize the engineers behind the engineering.”

Choset said that personal connections, like the one between him and his CMU students, are what keeps the industry running. 

Editor’s note: HEBI Robots will exhibit at Booth 448-12 at the Robotics Summit & Expo, which will be on May 1 and 2 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Registration is now open.

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Aquanaut is a subsea robot designed for inspection and maintenance of undersea platforms. | Credit: Nauticus

Nauticus Robotics Inc. this week announced that it has secured $12 million in a second tranche of investment that began in late 2023. The Webster, Texas-based company said it plans to use the funding to expedite commercialization of its flagship robot, the Aquanaut.

This month, Nauticus said it expects to begin the final certification of its remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) for commercial operations in depths ranging from 200 to 2,000 m (656 to 6,561 ft.). The company is preparing for Aquanaut‘s first job, inspecting a deep-water production facility of a major oil and gas company in the Gulf of Mexico.

Nauticus retools management on course to commercialization

Nauticus Robotics stated in a release the additional investment demonstrates ongoing support from its current stakeholders and is a part of strategic initiatives launched by its board of directors to enhance operations and financial sustainability. As part of this process, the company has assembled a new senior management team.

In January, Nauticus promoted John W. Gibson Jr. to the position of temporary CEO. He took over for departing co-founder Nicolaus Radford, who outlined his vision for the company and Aquanaut on The Robot Report Podcast Episode 100.

Gibson brings more than 35 years of experience in the energy and IT industries, including serving as president of Halliburton Energy Services.  He was the president of Nauticus since last October and has been on its board since 2022. 

Other recent executive appointments include Victoria Hay as interim chief financial officer and Nicholas Bigney as general counsel. Nauticus announced both in the fourth quarter of 2023. JD Yamokoski, the company’s longtime chief technology officer, has remained and rounds out its executive management team.

Aquanaut to take on new missions

Nauticus Robotics asserted that its new financial and business structure will help it provide proven and innovative systems for the “blue economy.” In the short term, this means working with oil and gas companies to improve inspections of underwater infrastructure.

In the long term, Nauticus said, the next generation of Aquanaut autonomous undersea robots will be used for maintenance and repair. Once offshore testing of the new new Aquanaut Mk2 vehicle is complete, the company plans to start working on a deepwater field.

“We currently have the intellectual property, prototypes, and the talent to deliver robust products and services,” said Gibson. “Team Nauticus is now laser-focused on converting our intellectual property, including both patents and trade secrets, into differentiated solutions that bring significant value to both commercial and government customers.”

“We are shifting from prototypes to creating reliable solutions for the blue economy,” he added. “We are pleased that our financing partners worked with us to address the ratchet provisions associated with earlier issued convertible securities, thereby enabling potential equity investment from others. We appreciate the engagement of the company’s board in addressing earlier challenges, and, as a result of our recent changes, are excited about the year ahead.”

Since becoming the president of Nauticus in October, Gibson said he has been assessing the company’s go-to-market strategy. Gibson acknowledged that finances and the ROV market required a realignment.

“The market sees our potential and supports our vision of delivering full autonomy to subsea operations,” he said. “However, the diffusion rate of our solutions requires a significant shift from the current paradigm of human operations to autonomous operations.”

“To eliminate the inertia to change, we recast our vision,” explained Gibson. “We realized the fastest path to full autonomy would be through the deployment of ‘tethered/augmented autonomy.’ This allows the customer and operators to retain the ability to intervene while simultaneously allowing Nauticus to gather the operational data needed to train our fully autonomous solutions for the future.”

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Nauticus toolKITT works on other subsea systems

Nauticus Robotics noted that its software design doesn’t depend on a specific platform and that it can be used on any subsurface vehicle. The Nauticus toolKITT software has already been put to use on several competitor ROVs for military work.

The company claimed that this product strategy makes it a “multi-platform operating system for a vast array of vehicles already deployed.” By deploying “tethered autonomy” onto current platforms, Nauticus said it expects to improve the efficiency of these underwater vehicles by more than 20%, while also lowering emissions and making all underwater robots safer.

In addition, this approach should yield an additional revenue stream for already-developed intellectual property, said Nauticus. This also provides real application feedback, helping to prioritize the product development roadmap, it said.

The commercialization of this new subsea vehicle operating system will continue to fund the development of the fully autonomous and untethered future for the Aquanaut platform.

“What Nauticus has planned can truly revolutionize the entire industry – and I don’t use that term lightly,” said Sean Halpin, head of autonomous solutions at the company. “We can now normalize [the] performance of ROV operators because you will no longer have disparities between [the] skill levels of employees. This provides substantial safeguards to any company using this technology.”

Chuck Claunch, co-head of software solutions at Nauticus, added: “We are creating a win-win situation for ROV operators. We are not asking them to give up complete control. These robots are not replacing jobs, but instead are making them both easier and more reliable.”

ROV pilots are a highly skilled class of operators. As more subsea renewables, oil, and gas infrastructure is installed, there is a growing market for the maintenence and repair of these platforms. Automating many of the tasks for the inspection robots, keeps humans safely at the surface and enables more frequent inspections.

“It’s not dissimilar to when pilots first needed to adjust to automation in the airline industry — they didn’t lose their jobs; they gained more reliable support to enjoy them,” said Paul Dinh, co-head of software solutions at Nauticus.

The toolKITT software can be configured to control any undersea robot or ROV. | Credit: Nauticus

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Top row, from left to right: the Ella smart stroller, Soft Robotics’ food packer, and the TM25S. Bottom row: Salidrone, M4, and Zipline’s delivery drone. | Source: NVIDIA

Outside the glare of the klieg lights that ChatGPT commanded this past year, a troupe of autonomous machines nudged forward the frontiers of robotics, according to NVIDIA.

Ella smart stroller makes a splash at CES

Ella — a smart stroller from Glüxkind Technologies, a startup in Vancouver, Canada — kicked off the year when it was named an honoree in the CES 2023 Innovation Awards.

The canny carriage uses computer vision running on the NVIDIA Jetson edge AI platform to follow parents. Its AI-powered abilities, like smart braking and a rock-my-baby mode, captured the attention of media outlets like Good Morning America and The Times of London as well as an NVIDIA AI Podcast interview with its husband-and-wife cofounders.

A member of NVIDIA Inception, a free program for cutting-edge startups, Glüxkind was one of seven companies with NVIDIA-powered products recognized at the Las Vegas event in January. They included:

• John Deere for its fully autonomous tractor
• AGRIST for its robot that automatically harvests bell peppers
• Inception member Skydio for its drone that can fly at a set distance and height without manual intervention
• Neubility, another Inception member, for its self-driving delivery robot
• Seoul Robotics, a partner in the NVIDIA Metropolis vision AI software, for its Level 5 Control Tower that can turn standard vehicles into self-driving care
• WHILL for its one-person vehicle that automatically guides a user inside places like airports or hospitals

mGripAI dexterously packs food

Bedford, Mass.-based Inception member Soft Robotics introduced its mGripAI system to an $8 trillion food industry hungry for automation. It combines 3D vision and AI to grasp delicate items such as chicken wings, attracting investors that include Tyson Foods and Johnsonville.

Soft Robotics uses the NVIDIA Omniverse platform and NVIDIA Isaac Sim robotics simulator to create 3D renderings of chicken parts on conveyor belts or in bins. With help from AI and the ray-tracing capabilities of NVIDIA RTX technology, the robot gripper can handle as many as 100 picks per minute, even under glare or changing light conditions.

“We’re all in on Omniverse and Isaac Sim, and that’s been working great for us,” David Weatherwax, senior director of software engineering at Soft Robotics, said in a January interview.

TM25S provides a keen eye in the factory

In a very different example of industrial digitalization, electronics manufacturer Quanta is inspecting the quality of its products using the TM25S, an AI-enabled robot from its subsidiary, Techman Robot.

Using Omniverse, Techman built a digital twin of the inspection robot — as well as the product to be inspected — in Isaac Sim. Programming the robot in simulation reduced time spent on the task by over 70%, compared with programming manually on the real robot.

Then, with optimization tools in Isaac Sim, Techman explored a massive number of program options in parallel on NVIDIA GPUs. The end result, shown in the video below, was an efficient solution that reduced the cycle time of each inspection by 20%.

Saildrone takes to the seas for data science

Saildrone, another Inception startup in Alameda, Calif., created uncrewed watercraft that can cost-effectively gather data for science, fisheries, weather forecasting and more.

NVIDIA Jetson modules process data streams from their sensors, some with help from NVIDIA Metropolis vision AI software such as NVIDIA DeepStream, a development kit for intelligent video analytics.

The video below shows how three of Saildrone’s smart sailboats are helping evaluate ocean health around the Hawaiian Islands.

Caltech M4 sets its sights on Mars

The next stop for one autonomous vehicle may be the red planet.

Caltech’s Multi-Modal Mobility Morphobot, or M4, can configure itself to walk, fly, or drive at speeds up to 40 mph (see video below). An M42 version is now in development at NASA as a Mars rover candidate and has attracted interest for other uses such as reconnaissance in fire zones.

Since releasing a paper on it in Nature Communications, the team has been inundated with proposals for the shape-shifting drone built on the NVIDIA Jetson platform.

Zipline delivery drones fly high

The year ended on a high note with Zipline announcing that its delivery drones flew more than 55 million miles and made more than 800,000 deliveries since the company’s start in 2011. The San Francisco-based company said it now completes one delivery every 70 seconds, globally.

That’s a major milestone for the Inception startup, the field it’s helping pioneer, and the customers who can receive everything from pizza to vitamins up to seven faster than by truck.

Zipline’s latest drone uses two Jetson Orin NX modules. It can carry 8 lb. of cargo for 10 miles at up to 70 mph to deliver packages in single-digit minutes while reducing carbon emissions 97% in comparison with gasoline-based delivery vehicles.

NVIDIA notes maker machines that inspire and amuse

Individual makers designed two autonomous vehicles this year worth special mentions.

Goran Vuksic with his AI-powered droid. | Source: NVIDIA

Kabilan KB, a robotics developer and student in Coimbatore, India, built an autonomous wheelchair using Jetson to run computer vision models that find and navigate a path to a user’s desired destination. The undergrad at the Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences aspires to one day launch a robotics startup.

Finally, an engineering manager in Copenhagen who’s a self-described Star Wars fanatic designed an AI-powered droid based on an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit. Goran Vuksic shared his step-by-step technical guide, so others can build their own sci-fi companions.

More than 6,500 companies and 1.2 million developers — as well as a community of makers and enthusiasts — use the NVIDIA Jetson and Isaac platforms for edge AI and robotics.

To get a look at where autonomous machines will go next, see what’s coming at CES in 2024.

Editor’s note: This blog reposted with permission from NVIDIA.

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Stevens Institute of Technology’s BlueROV uses perception and mapping capabilities to operate without GPS, lidar, or radar underwater. Source: American Society of Mechanical Engineers

While defense spending is the source of many innovations in robotics and artificial intelligence, government policy usually takes a while to catch up to technological developments. Given all the attention on generative AI this year, October’s executive order on AI safety and security was “encouraging,” observed Dr. Brendan Englot, director of the Stevens Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

“There’s really very little regulation at this point, so it’s important to set common-sense priorities,” he told The Robot Report. “It’s a measured approach between unrestrained innovation for profit versus some AI experts wanting to halt all development.” 

AI order covers cybersecurity, privacy, and national security

The executive order sets standards for AI testing, corporate information sharing with the government, and privacy and cybersecurity safeguards. The White House also directed the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to set “rigorous standards for extensive red-team testing to ensure safety before public release.”

The Biden-Harris administration’s order stated the goals of preventing the use of AI to engineer dangerous biological materials, to commit fraud, and to violate civil rights. In addition to developing “principles and best practices to mitigate the harms and maximize the benefits of AI for workers,” the administration claimed that it will promote U.S. innovation, competitiveness, and responsible government.

It also ordered the Department of Homeland Security to apply the standards to critical infrastructure sectors and to establish an AI Safety and Security Board. In addition, the executive order said the Department of Energy and the Department of Homeland Security must address AI systems’ threats to critical infrastructure and national security. It plans to develop a National Security Memorandum to direct further actions.

“It’s a common-sense set of measures to make AI more safe and trustworthy, and it captured a lot of different perspectives,” said Englot, an assistant professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. “For example, it called the general principle of watermarking as important. This will help resolve legal disputes over audio, video, and text. It might slow things a little bit, but the general public stands to benefit.”

Stevens Institute research touches multiple domains

“When I started with AI research, we began with conventional algorithms for robot localization and situational awareness,” recalled Englot. “At the Stevens Institute for Artificial Intelligence [SIAI], we saw how AI and machine learning could help.”

“We incorporated AI in two areas. The first was to enhance perception from limited information coming from sensors,” he said. “For example, machine learning could help an underwater robot with grainy, low-resolution images by building more descriptive, predictive maps so it could navigate more safely.”

“The second was to begin using reinforcement learning for decision making, for planning under uncertainty,” Englot explained. “Mobile robots need to navigate and make good decisions in stochastic, disturbance-filled environments, or where it doesn’t know the environment.”

Since stepping into the director role at the institute, Englot said he has seen work to apply AI to healthcare, finance, and the arts.

“We’re taking on larger challenges with multidisciplinary research,” he said. “AI can be used to enhance human decision making.”

Drive to commercialization could limit development paths

Generative AI such as ChatGPT has dominated headlines all year. The recent controversy around Sam Altman’s ouster and subsequent restoration as CEO of OpenAI demonstrates that the path to commercialization isn’t as direct as some assume, said Englot.

“There’s never a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model to go with emerging technologies,” he asserted. “Robots have done well in nonprofit and government development, and some have transitioned to commercial applications.”

“Others, not so much. Automated driving, for instance, has been dominated by the commercial sector,” Englot said. “It has some achievements, but it hasn’t totally lived up to its promise yet. The pressures from the rush to commercialization are not always a good thing for making technology more capable.”

AI needs more training, says Englot

To compensate for AI “hallucinations” or false responses to user questions, Englot said AI will be paired with model-based planning, simulation, and optimization frameworks.

“We’ve found that the generalized foundation model for GPT-4 is not as useful for specialized domains where tolerance for error is very low, such as for medical diagnosis,” said the Stevens Institute professor. “The degree of hallucination that’s acceptable for a chatbot isn’t here, so you need specialized training curated by experts.”

“For highly mission-critical applications, such as driving a vehicle, we should realize that generative AI may solve a problem, but it doesn’t understand all the rules, since they’re not hard-coded and it’s inferring from contextual information,” said Englot.

He recommended pairing generative AI with finite element models, computational fluid dynamics, or a well-trained expert in an iterative conversation. “We’ll eventually arrive at a powerful capability for solving problems and making more accurate predictions,” Englot predicted.

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Collaboration to yield advances in design

The combination of generative AI with simulation and domain experts could lead to faster, more innovative designs in the next five years, said Englot.

“We’re already seeing generative AI-enabled Copilot tools in GitHub for creating code; we could soon see it used for modeling parts to be 3D-printed,” he said.

However, using robots to serve as the physical embodiments of AI in human-machine interactions could take more time because of safety concerns, he noted.

“The potential for harm from generative AI right now is limited to specific outputs — images, text, and audio,” Englot said. “Bridging the gap between AI and systems that can walk around and have physical consequences will take some engineering.”

Stevens Institute AI director still bullish on robotics

Generative AI and robotics are “a wide-open area of research right now,” said Englot. “Everyone is trying to understand what’s possible, the extent to which we can generalize, and how to generate data for these foundational models.”

While there is an embarrassment of riches on the Web for text-based models, robotics AI developers must draw from benchmark data sets, simulation tools, and the occasional physical resource such as Google’s “arm farm.” There is also the question of how generalizable data is across tasks, since humanoid robots are very different from drones, Englot said.

Legged robots such as Disney’s demonstration at iROS, which was trained to walk “with personality” through reinforcement learning, show that progress is being made.

Boston Dynamics spent years on designing, prototyping, and testing actuators to get to more efficient all-electric models, he said.

“Now, the AI component has come in by virtue of other companies replicating [Boston Dynamics’] success,” said Englot. “As with Unitree, ANYbotics, and Ghost Robotics trying to optimize the technology, AI is taking us to new levels of robustness.”

“But it’s more than locomotion. We’re a long way to integrating state-of-the-art perception, navigation, and manipulation and to get costs down,” he added. “The DARPA Subterranean Challenge was a great example of solutions to such challenges of mobile robotics. The Stevens Institute is conducting research on reliable underwater mobile manipulation funded by the USDA for sustainable offshore energy infrastructure and aquaculture.”

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The Icefin underwater robot has sonar, chemical, and biological sensors that help researchers learn more about sub-ice environments. | Source: Cornell University

A research team led by Cornell University is using an underwater robot, called Icefin, to gain a better understanding of ice shelf crevasses. 

Crevasses in ice play an important role in helping to circulate seawater beneath Antarctic ice shelves. This circulation can potentially influence the stability of the shelves, according to the research team. In particular, the team studied the Ross Ice Shelf, the largest ice shelf in Antarctica. 

Icefin is a tube-shaped robot roughly 12 feet long and less than 10 inches around. It is equipped with thrusters, cameras, sonar, and sensors for measuring water temperature, pressure, and salinity. First deployed in 2019, the robot can climb up and down crevasses in the base of ice shelves.

The robot revealed a new circulation pattern, a jet funneling water sideways through the crevasse it was studying, in addition to rising and sinking currents, and diverse ice formations shaped by shifting flows and temperatures. 

For its work in the Ross Ice Shelf, Icefin was deployed on a tether down a 1,900-foot borehole drilled with hot water, near where the ice shelf meets the Kamb Ice Stream. This was an ideal place for the team to study the long-term effects of underwater conditions, as the Ross Shelf is older than previously explored ice shelves, making it more representative of Antartcia’s other ice shelves, and the Kamb Ice Stream is stagnant.

This climb resulted in the first 3D measurements of ocean conditions near where it meets the coastline, an important juncture known as the grounding zone. These grounding zones are key to controlling the balance of ice sheets, and the places where changing ocean conditions have the most impact. 

On the last of three dives, Matthew Meister, a senior research engineer, drove Icefin into one of five crevasses near the team’s borehole. The robot climbed almost 150 feet up one slope and descended the other. 

With the robot, the team was able to detail changing ice patterns as the crevasse narrowed. They found that melting at the crevasse base and salt rejection from freezing near the top moved water up and down around the horizontal jet steam, driving uneven melting and freezing on the two sides, with more melting along the lower downstream wall. 

“Each feature reveals a different type of circulation or relationship of the ocean temperature to freezing,” Peter Washam, a polar oceanographer and research scientist in the Department of Astronomy at Cornell and lead author on the paper, said. “Seeing so many different features within a crevasse, so many changes in the circulation, was surprising.”

The research team believes it’s likely that similar conditions exist in adjacent crevasses. The findings highlight crevasses’ potential to transport changing ocean conditions through an ice shelf’s most vulnerable region. 

“If the water heats up or cools off, it can move around in the back of the ice shelf quite vigorously, and crevasses are one of the means by which that happens,” Washam said. “When it comes to projecting sea-level rise, that’s important to have in the models.”

These new discoveries will help to improve the modeling of ice shelf melting and freezing rates at grounding zones and of their potential contribution to global sea-level rise. 

The Icefin team was led by Britney Schmidt, an associate professor of astronomy and earth and atmospheric sciences and Cornell Engineering, and the director of the Planetary Habitability and Technology Lab. The research also included members of a New Zealand-based research team led by Christina Hulbe, a professor at the University of Otago. 

This research was funded by Project RISE UP (Ross Ice Shelf and Europa Underwater Probe), part of NASA’s Planetary Science and Technology from Analog Research program, with logistical support provided by the National Science Foundation through the U.S. Antarctic Program.

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