From Arctic Expeditions to Coastal Labs: Robotic Infrastructure for Marine Monitoring
The impact from research in marine robotics emerges in innovative implementations in joint projects combing science and technology. To challenge the knowledge fronts, development of tools and methods beyond the state-of-the-art are often necessary. Through the Nansen Legacy and Climarest project, robotics and autonomy have been developed to map and monitor the physical and biological conditions in the Arctic. To address the sampling problem – approaches to adaptive mission planning for AUVs have been developed. Both physical process studies in the Polar Front region and primary production have been investigated using data-driven and onboard planning for AUVs. This work has paved the way for collaborative and adaptive robotic missions taking advantage of communication to enable Remote Operating Centres (ROCs) in the project SFI Harvest. The distribution and density of zooplankton are the objectives of the project. The ROC operation, enabled by efficient communication channels, enables USV and AUV operators to be collocated increasing communication and cognitive capacity of both operators and researchers. USV, wavegliders and AUVs can hence cooperate on data driven and adaptive missions, controlled from the ROC more than 100 km away. To develop technology that can be brought to this kind multidisciplinary operation requires a strong infrastructure that is sufficiently flexible to allow deployment of new and unique solutions, while being sufficiently mature to work reliably in the field. Fjordlab will build on the Applied Underwater Robotics Laboratory and be a national field laboratory, jointly operated by NTNU and SINTEF. It is designed to accelerate innovation in marine autonomy, robotics, ocean observation, and sustainable aquaculture.