{"id":261170,"date":"2021-08-03T04:53:07","date_gmt":"2021-08-03T04:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationaus.com\/?p=20749"},"modified":"2021-08-03T04:53:07","modified_gmt":"2021-08-03T04:53:07","slug":"what-lies-below-drones-will-tell-us-definitively","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/08\/03\/what-lies-below-drones-will-tell-us-definitively\/","title":{"rendered":"What lies below? Drones will tell\u00a0us, definitively\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

While Australians were celebrating<\/span><\/b>\u00a0the arrival of 2021,\u00a0off the coast of\u00a0eastern Australia the\u00a0<\/span>Schmidt Ocean Institute\u2019s<\/span><\/a>\u00a0research vessel\u202f<\/span>Falkor<\/span><\/i>\u00a0was busy mapping the seabed with a drone\u00a0for\u00a0a hugely\u00a0ambitious\u00a0global project,\u00a0<\/span>Seabed 2030<\/span><\/a>, to produce a definitive map of the world\u2019s\u00a0ocean floor by 2030.<\/span><\/p>\n

Schmidt Ocean Institute executive director\u00a0Dr\u00a0Jyotika\u00a0Virmani\u00a0will speak\u00a0on how drones are revolutionising underwater research\u00a0at the\u00a0<\/span>World of Drones & Robotics Congress 2021,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0to be held at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre on 18 and 19 August, supported by\u00a0InnovationAus.<\/span><\/p>\n

She will\u00a0also\u00a0discuss\u00a0Falkor\u2019s discoveries on its survey voyages in Australian waters in late 2019 and early 2020, including the\u00a0<\/span>discovery of a new coral reef off Western Australia<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

For its research in Australian waters Falkor use\u00a0<\/span>a tethered remotely controlled underwater vehicle<\/span><\/a>. These\u00a0have been around for many years\u00a0(the first was\u00a0<\/span>built in 1953<\/span><\/a>), but it is the development of autonomous surface and subsurface drones, which<\/span>\u00a0the institute is trialling<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that\u00a0is\u00a0making Seabed 2030 achievable,\u00a0Dr Virmani\u00a0said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Falkor\"
Launching subsea drones on board the research vessel Falkor<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe\u00a0robotics\u00a0technology of submersible drones has changed quite a lot in the last five years or so. What we are seeing now is unmanned surface vessels, controlled by somebody on land, that\u00a0have the ability to\u00a0deploy and recover autonomous subsurface drones.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of 2015, about five percent of the sea floor had been mapped. And the estimate was it would take 200 to 600 years to map the entire sea floor at the rate we were going with the technology of the day.\u00a0And\u00a0back in 2015, the estimated cost to map the sea floor to high resolution was slightly higher than $3 billion. With these technologies, we can do it much cheaper.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Before joining the\u00a0Schmidt Ocean\u00a0Institute\u00a0Dr Virmani\u00a0was a senior director with\u00a0<\/span>the XPrize Foundation<\/span><\/a>: a non-profit organisation that designs and hosts public competitions to encourage technological development to benefit humanity. She was prize lead for the Ocean XPrize that, in 2019 awarded a US$4m XPrize to <\/span>GEBCO-NF Alumni<\/span><\/a>, an international team based in the US,\u00a0for its development of an unmanned surface vessel, the\u202f<\/span>SEA-KIT<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0for\u00a0use on\u00a0the Seabed 2030 project.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSEA-KIT\u00a0did a\u00a0three-week\u00a0mapping mission in the Atlantic without anybody on board,\u201d Dr\u00a0Virmani\u00a0said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe big breakthrough through that XPrize competition was twofold.\u00a0Until then very few autonomous\u00a0subsurface vessels had\u00a0actually launched\u00a0from the coastline;\u00a0it\u00a0was very difficult to do that. The second thing was\u00a0the ability for a surface vessel\u00a0with nobody\u00a0on board to launch an\u00a0autonomous vehicle at sea\u00a0and recover it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She said another aspect of\u00a0SEA-KIT\u00a0that supported Seabed 2030 was\u00a0the use of cloud technology to process data from the subsea drones in near real-time. This\u00a0provides results from survey data that\u00a0enable decisions to be taken\u00a0to\u00a0modify the survey while it is underway.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another successful autonomous vessel, also backed by\u00a0Schmidt Ocean Institute\u00a0founders\u00a0Eric and Wendy Schmidt,\u00a0is\u00a0<\/span>Saildrone<\/span><\/a>. It claims to be \u201cthe world\u2019s leading collector of ocean related in situ data via uncrewed vehicle, above and below the sea surface.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSaildrone went around Antarctica in the winter where it\u2019s too rough for people to go. That\u2019s another advantage of these autonomous vessels,\u201d Dr Virmani said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt measured carbon\u00a0dioxide. Until\u00a0then, scientists thought Co2 was absorbed by the ocean in the winter around Antarctica. Turns out\u00a0it’s\u00a0the other way around.\u00a0The ocean\u00a0outgases\u00a0Co2. Until then, it\u00a0had\u00a0been too rough to\u00a0go and take those measurements.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Schmidt Ocean Institute is also planning to make greater use of underwater drones. It has just acquired a new survey vessel,\u00a0<\/span>the Falkor (too)<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0\u201cOur goal\u00a0is to\u00a0have that as the mothership,\u00a0and\u00a0a bunch of autonomous drones we can deploy from there,\u201d Dr Virmani said.<\/span><\/p>\n

And underwater exploration using drones is not only for well-funded\u00a0global research organisations. A tethered unit with a 4K camera capable of operating at depths up to 100m can be\u00a0<\/span>bought for $2000 in Australia<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr Virmani said: \u201cThose are being used to photograph the underside of manta rays, and there’s\u00a0<\/span>a massive database<\/span><\/a>\u00a0where you can identify manta rays from those photos.\u00a0So\u00a0they open up an opportunity for citizen scientists to feed the data into the scientific research, for fun and for educational purposes.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This story was produced\u00a0as part of a\u00a0media partnership between\u00a0InnovationAus\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span><\/i>World of Drones\u00a0and Robotics\u00a0Congress\u00a0to be\u00a0held in Brisbane\u00a0Convention and\u00a0Exhibition\u00a0Centre on the 18-19<\/span><\/i>th<\/span><\/i>\u00a0of August.<\/span><\/i><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The post What lies below? Drones will tell\u00a0us, definitively\u00a0<\/a> appeared first on InnovationAus<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on InnovationAus<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While Australians were celebrating\u00a0the arrival of 2021,\u00a0off the coast of\u00a0eastern Australia the\u00a0Schmidt Ocean Institute\u2019s\u00a0research vessel\u202fFalkor\u00a0was busy mapping the seabed with a drone\u00a0for\u00a0a hugely\u00a0ambitious\u00a0global project,\u00a0Seabed 2030, to produce a definitive map of the world\u2019s\u00a0ocean floor by 2030. Schmidt Ocean Institute executive director\u00a0Dr\u00a0Jyotika\u00a0Virmani\u00a0will speak\u00a0on how drones are revolutionising underwater research\u00a0at the\u00a0World of Drones & Robotics Congress 2021,\u00a0to…<\/p>\n

The post What lies below? Drones will tell\u00a0us, definitively\u00a0<\/a> appeared first on InnovationAus<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":626,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1916,33015,33016,33017,33018,33019],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261170"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/626"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":261171,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261170\/revisions\/261171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}