Miscellaneous

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/p8DNXTRMVtA

SailBOT - Virginia Tech
June 4, 2014


A team of Virginia Tech engineering students will race in the 8th annual SailBot 2014 International Robotic Sailing Regatta, a competition dedicated to building unmanned, autonomous miniature sailboats able to operate with limited to no human control.

The Virginia Tech SailBOT team includes roughly 40 students from across the College of Engineering, including the departments of aerospace and ocean engineering, mechanical engineering, engineering and science mechanics, and electrical and computer engineering.

The regalia tasks competitors with a traditional sailing race, station keeping, navigational accuracy, and the overall craft presentation. Among the event rules: Craft can be no longer than 2 meters.

The sailboat –black, 6.5 foot in length and lightweight, with a white sail atop –- project started in spring 2013 with an interest meeting, the brainchild of the Virginia Tech Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers student organization. The group wanted a surface ship team for ocean engineering students to balance the underwater Human Powered Submarine team, a long-time staple of the Ware Lab, said team commodore Thomas Shea III of Crofton, Maryland.

[Airicist]

https://vimeo.com/64262834

Robotic Solutions - Al Seer Marine
April 17, 2013

[Airicist]

https://vimeo.com/163351388

Row-bot
from Phil Pilgrim
April 18, 2016


This is a floating RC robot that is propelled by oars, rather than by paddlewheels or a propeller.

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/YSDSy2bWQcc

Robot walks on water

Published on May 11, 2016

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/Ca0zAAIVK3E

Robot vs. Volcano: “Sometimes It’s Just Fun to Blow Stuff Up” (Exclusive) | National Geographic

Published on Apr 19, 2017


“Sharkcano.” It’s not the title of some campy summer blockbuster, but rather a real-world phenomenon that went viral in 2015, when scientists on a National Geographic expedition found sharks living inside one of the most active underwater volcanoes on Earth. Not surprisingly, the team was eager to go back and learn more, but how do you explore an environment that could easily kill you? You send in robots, of course.

“Our goal is to send instrumentation there to get meaningful data, but sometimes it’s really fun to just blow stuff up,” says National Geographic explorer and ocean engineer Brennan Phillips.

Brennan reunited with his 2015 expedition mates—Alistair Grinham of University of Queensland and Matthew Dunbabin of Queensland University of Technology and Director of GFB Robotics—to once again venture about 20 miles off the coast of the Solomon Islands to the Pacific Ocean’s violent Kavachi volcano.

About Expedition Raw:
Surprises, challenges, and amazing behind-the-scenes moments captured by National Geographic explorers in the field.

We talked to Brennan and Matthew about their return to “Sharkcano.”

Q: Why send robots into one of the most active submarine volcanoes on Earth?

Brenna Phillips: Cause it's cool. But also, as a scientist, it's about getting that last data point, right before the eruption—pH, carbon dioxide, temperature fluctuations, acidity.

Matthew Dunbabin: After looking at a friend’s amazing video of Kavachi’s past eruptions, hearing about the remoteness of the site, and how challenging the conditions are, we were determined to try to get there. This all addresses an interesting problem with monitoring in extreme environments, in that no matter how well-built your systems are or how much they cost, it is very unlikely they will survive an explosion. So, to start increasing our knowledge of these environments you have to develop low-cost monitoring tools that are capable of undertaking meaningful measurements but are not so costly you can’t afford to lose them.

Q: How did you design the robots?

MD: Kavachi is in a remote part of the Solomon Islands with very limited travel options. So you have to design robots that fit into carry-on luggage on a Twin Otter plane. Also, these robots are considered disposable. Therefore, we are making them as low cost as possible—hundreds of dollars.

BP: In this case we used some used PVC sewer pipe that was found in the village. You just put some electronics onto that and wham-o, you have an autonomous boat.

MD: I like to call it bush robotics.

Q: What did you learn from sending the robots into Kavachi?

MD: In the vicinity of the vent we found a huge drop in the surface pH levels, water temperatures ten degrees higher than normal, and we learned Kavachi is a strong greenhouse gas emitter.

Q: How did it feel to discover sharks inside a volcano?

BP: Well, to put my scientist hat on there are a number of reasons why there shouldn't be anything living in there except maybe bacteria. Number one it's very hot and acidic, and we measured that. Number two, it's very turbid, so the water is very cloudy. None of these things are good for fish. Whether they're good for sharks, that's up for debate. Yet we saw sharks that in between eruptions are darting in and out between the clouds of the plume. So that's a lingering question mark.

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/bU6J5IZZhfk

New Norwegian autonomous shipping test-bed opens (https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/new-norwegian-autonomous-shipping-test-bed-opens)

Published on Dec 7, 2017


Extensive new area opens on the Oslofjord at Horten. KONGSBERG helps to establish new resource for development of autonomous vessels and technology.

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/ktYViivw27A

Printable autonomous boats

Published on May 23, 2018


Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have designed a fleet of autonomous boats that offer high maneuverability and precise control. These boats can be 3-D printed using low-cost hardware and materials, and could serve as models for future self-assembling, driver-less water taxis transporting people and goods from place to place.

"Fleet of autonomous boats could service some cities, reducing road traffic (http://news.mit.edu/2018/fleet-autonomous-boats-service-cities-reducing-road-traffic-0523)"
Researchers design 3-D-printed, driverless boats that can provide transport and self-assemble into other floating structures.

by Rob Matheson
May 23, 2018

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/R4CAZCCaUUg

Engineering smarter robotic boats for safer, cheaper work on the water - Science Nation

Published on Jun 4, 2018


Tease: From conducting bridge inspections to search and rescue missions, future unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) will help humans with the dangerous or repetitive work

Description: Roboticists Karl von Ellenrieder and Satyandra Gupta may work on opposite U.S. coasts, but they envision the same future for work on the water -- fleets of boats and ships operating more safely, efficiently and less expensively, with the help of robotics. USVs, or unmanned surface vehicles, are basically robotic boats guided by humans, who may or may not be on board. von Ellenrieder of Florida Atlantic University and Gupta of the University of Southern California say teams of humans working with robotic boats could transform jobs vital to society, such as bridge inspections, environmental monitoring, and search and rescue.

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), von Ellenrieder and Gupta are currently focused on engineering new decision-making tools to make USVs smarter and more autonomous. Advances in this area could be extremely important from both a regulatory and practical standpoint for the future deployment of human–robot teams on the water.

This research is part of NSF’s investment in the National Robotics Initiative (NRI), which seeks to accelerate the development and use of robots in the United States that work beside, or cooperatively with, people.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF awards #1526016 and #1634433, NRI: Collaborative Research: Enabling Risk-Aware Decision Making in Human-Guided Unmanned Surface Vehicle Teams.

[Airicist]

Article "Massive Cargo Ships Are Going Autonomous. Here Are The Companies & Trends Driving The Global Maritime Industry Forward. (https://www.cbinsights.com/research/autonomous-shipping-trends)"

August 28, 2018

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/5mhWmyh1RBQ

Self-driving boats: the future of navigating the high seas

Published on Dec 4, 2018


What if the all the ships that navigated our vast oceans could navigate, chart a course, and think for themselves—without any human input?

This is the future the Sea Machines Robotics in Boston, Massachusetts envisions—and it’ll be here even before driverless cars become mainstream. Motherboard set sail on Sea Machines’ boats to see exactly what the future of our automated seas will look like.

Created with Geico.

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/mqX2BmiEDnQ

How a fleet of wind-powered drones is changing our understanding of the ocean | Sebastien de Halleux

Published on Dec 11, 2018


Our oceans are unexplored and undersampled -- today, we still know more about other planets than our own. How can we get to a better understanding of this vast, important ecosystem? Explorer Sebastien de Halleux shares how a new fleet of wind- and solar-powered drones is collecting data at sea in unprecedented detail, revealing insights into things like global weather and the health of our fish stocks. Learn more about what a better grasp of the ocean could mean for us back on land.

[Airicist]

https://youtu.be/3YJPwrz2LWM

Thales demonstrates maritime autonomy progress

Published on Mar 11, 2019


Naval Attaches get a first-hand understanding of Maritime Autonomy at Thales’s Turnchapel Wharf Maritime Autonomy Centre in Plymouth.

[Airicist]

Article "The Incredible Autonomous Ships Of The Future: Run By Artificial Intelligence Rather Than A Crew (https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/06/05/the-incredible-autonomous-ships-of-the-future-run-by-artificial-intelligence-rather-than-a-crew/#3bd71ee76fbf)"

by Bernard Marr
June 5, 2019

[Airicist]

Article "Robot Boats Leave Autonomous Cars in Their Wake (https://www.wsj.com/articles/robot-boats-leave-autonomous-cars-in-their-wake-11598673601)"
Driverless ships don’t have to worry about crowded roads. And they don’t need bunks—or toilets.

by Christopher Mims
August 31, 2020

[Airicist2]

Article "China’s AI drone vessel takes maiden voyage, passes first sea trial (https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3181176/chinas-ai-drone-vessel-takes-maiden-voyage-passes-first-sea)"
The unnamed USV ‘meets expectations’ in 3-hour testing offshore of Zhoushan in Zhejiang province
In appearance the vessel is a hybrid of the US destroyer Zumwalt and its Sea Hunter drone ship

by Liu Zhen (https://twitter.com/sampleboxplots)
June 10, 2022