<p dir="ltr" id="isPasted">Engineering Space is an in-depth documentary series that unveils the new generation of space technologies and the people and companies developing them. Engineers and entrepreneurs are democratizing access to space. Our goal is to enable you to understand the cutting-edge, be inspired, and discover practical insights to apply to your own engineering endeavors.</p><p dir="ltr">In the first episode of Engineering Space we meet two engineers from Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic; Principal Mechanical Engineer Kerry Quinn and Lead Software Engineer Taylor Whitaker. The space company aims to make space missions feasible and more affordable for science, exploration, and commerce. They define themselves as a lunar logistics company, intending to provide end-to-end delivery services for payloads to the Moon.</p><p dir="ltr">Astrobotic works out of the largest private facility in the world dedicated to lunar logistics. In this impressive 47,000-square-foot complex, The company builds and operates its lines of landers, rovers, autonomous spacecraft navigation systems, and other space technologies. Once operational, payloads will be controlled directly from the Astrobotic Mission Control Center inside their headquarters located in the heart of Pittsburgh&rsquo;s North Side.</p><h2 dir="ltr">Developing lightweight moon rovers</h2><p dir="ltr">The team is developing two rovers specifically for Moon exploration. The <span style="background-color: transparent;">CubeRover&reg; is a super-light modular vehicle designed to provide affordable mobility for scientific instruments and other payloads to operate on the surface of the Moon. Because CubeRover&reg; can be as light as just four kilograms &mdash; it can contribute to reduced flight costs, making the Moon more accessible.</span><br><span style="background-color: transparent;">&nbsp;<span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 302px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjgzNjIzNTg3MTUwLVJvdmVyMi5wbmciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjk1MCwiZml0IjoiY292ZXIifX19" style="width: 300px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner" spellcheck="false">The Astrorobotics CubeRover&reg;. Image credit: Astrobotics.</span></span></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" id="isPasted">The Polaris rover was designed to accommodate diverse lunar payloads with distinct mission profiles, like lunar regolith digging or water ice harvesting. Polaris can support up to 90 kg of payload mass, traverse long distances, and provide direct-to-Earth (DTE) communication. Companies, governments, universities, non-profits, and individuals can send payloads to the Moon on Polaris for $4.5M per kilogram of payload. For every kilogram of payload, Astrobotic can provide 0.5 W of continuous power and 10 kbps of bandwidth.</p><p dir="ltr" id="isPasted">In this episode of Engineering Space, we follow along with Astrobotic engineers as they do mobility testing on the engineering model of their CubeRover&reg;. It&#39;s the first time the team has tested the rover with its MLI (Multilayer Insulation) and electronics package. The testing will compare the engineering model with other models in development.&nbsp;</p><h2 dir="ltr">Mimicking the Moon&#39;s surface</h2><p dir="ltr">Testing rovers intended for the moon requires the careful creation of an environment that resembles the moon&#39;s surface as closely as possible. The tests are conducted in their test pit of lunar regolith, a material that mimics the fine powdery material covering the moon. Almost all of the moon&#39;s surface is covered in this fine, white powdery material, with only small areas of hard bedrock on the walls of very steep moon craters.&nbsp;</p><p dir="ltr">Regolith materials are developed by NASA or other space companies. For example, the majority of the regolith used in the Astrobotic testing is made by the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/home/index.html" target="_blank">Glenn Research Center</a>. The regolith, known as GRC-1<sup>[1]</sup> is made from four kinds of quartz silica.&nbsp;</p><p dir="ltr">Lunar regolith has compactibility properties<sup>[2]</sup>, which means when it is agitated, it dilates or becomes lower in volume as the small particles fall between the larger particles. You can imagine this clearly by thinking of a container of flour that compacts when you tap it on a table. This is also how the iconic astronaut footprints were formed on the Moon.&nbsp;</p><p dir="ltr"><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 302px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjgzNjIyMzQwNzUzLTEwLmpwZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6OTUwLCJmaXQiOiJjb3ZlciJ9fX0=" style="width: 300px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner" spellcheck="false">The rover prototype during testing in the lunar regolith material.</span></span></span></p><p dir="ltr">This quality of the regolith means that the lightweight rovers developed by Astrobotic are expected to sink down slightly when they are on the moon, rather than moving across its surface like a small rover would on sand on Earth.&nbsp;</p><p dir="ltr">To mimic the moon without simulating in zero gravity, super lightweight versions of the rovers are developed that account for the difference in gravitational acceleration. Lunar gravitational acceleration is 1.62 m/s^2 (meters per second squared) while Earth&rsquo;s gravitational acceleration is 9.807 m/s^2 (meters per second squared). &nbsp;The moon rover weighs about 6 kg, so the testing version weighs just 1 kg.&nbsp;</p><h2 dir="ltr">Design of a lunar rover wheel that sinks and turns&nbsp;</h2><p dir="ltr">The moon surface tests enable the Astrobotic engineering team to look at each aspect of the rover, including its grip on the lunar regolith and the way it traverses different types of terrain, such as flat, ascents, and descents.&nbsp;</p><p dir="ltr">A really critical part of the rover is the design of its wheels. They must be lightweight, robust to the extreme temperatures of the moon as well as suitable for the fine, flour-like conditions of the lunar surface. The Astrobotic rover has been tested with multiple types of wheels, sizes, widths, and materials.</p><p dir="ltr">The current design of the wheel is fairly narrow, with regular perforations and grousers (protrusions similar to those on a tank) that allow the rover to move through the powdery surface. This design also enables the rover to complete movements such as figure-eights without the rover having a complex drive system such as articulated directional steering that would add extra weight.&nbsp;</p><p dir="ltr">The engineering model of the rover being tested is reserved for special testing as it&#39;s the closest prototype to the finished product. To protect the high-value prototype, simultaneous testing happens on other simpler versions of the rover. These tests are often specific to a single task such as hill climbing.&nbsp;</p><p dir="ltr"><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 302px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjgzNjIyMzgzODgzLTUuanBnIiwiZWRpdHMiOnsicmVzaXplIjp7IndpZHRoIjo5NTAsImZpdCI6ImNvdmVyIn19fQ==" style="width: 300px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner" spellcheck="false">The perforations and trousers enable the rover to navigate the soft terrain.&nbsp;</span></span></span></p><h2 dir="ltr">A mission to make the moon accessible</h2><p>Astrobotic was founded in 2007 and currently has more than 130 employees. It has won several large contracts from NASA and has critical missions with the space agency planned. In addition to the rovers described above, Astrobotic has developed moon landers, a moon power grid, and vision technology.&nbsp;</p><p dir="ltr">The company&#39;s first mission is set to be the first commercial mission to land on another planetary body. The Peregrine Rover will land on the Gruithuisen Domes of the moon and deliver a range of scientific instruments, technologies, mementos, and other payloads from six different countries, dozens of science teams, and hundreds of individuals. The date of the mission will be announced shortly.&nbsp;</p><p dir="ltr">In 2024, Astrobotic will undertake the Griffin Mission One (GM1) &nbsp;to the Lunar South Pole. It will deliver NASA&rsquo;s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER). Griffin will land at the South Pole and deploy VIPER to conduct the first widespread ground truth measurements of lunar water ice. Such ice may one day be used for life support and propellant that could assist future deep space explorers. Some of the instruments on PM1 will be operated as a dress rehearsal for their use on VIPER. This GM1 contract was awarded under the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/commercial-lunar-payload-services" target="_blank">NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services &nbsp;(CLPS) &nbsp;initiative.&nbsp;</a></p><h2 dir="ltr">Learn more about cutting-edge space companies and technologies</h2><p dir="ltr">The Engineering Space documenatry series is a collaboration between engineering community platform Wevolver, and two independent Californian filmmakers and producers; <a href="https://flipbirdfilms.com/" target="_blank">Flipbird Films</a> and Green Run Productions. This first episode is sponsored by <a href="https://www.wevolver.com/profile/duro" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Duro</a>, which develops Product Lifecycle Management software for hardware engineering teams.</p><blockquote><blockquote><p dir="ltr">Having previously worked at SpaceX, I know how tough it can be to create technology that can withstand the harsh environment of space. We&#39;re proud to sponsor this Engineering Space episode and help inspire engineers everywhere!</p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p><em id="isPasted">Kellan O&#39;Connor, COO and Co-founder of Duro</em><em><br></em></p></blockquote></blockquote><p dir="ltr">Sign up below to get updates when a new &#39;Engineering Space&#39; episode gets released!</p><p dir="ltr"><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable fr-active" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe src="https://c8056756.sibforms.com/serve/MUIEALrRLDzuUm9n0ZOf8rXFzimkYs9rS_nCzav7CGHGM8USNRBoKa4J5jwLh7jPqbBt7DQ-iIzGhsx_wFSBXNb4KPhpppkyJ93mD2PZJvl1pMCE9zXvsMc7hBtlPYgaIBDpec1zdrmpcCW6xuqC94Suy4YcAasZMu8t7DxX1EoakY6Xqdk8WBelkzJyrbq88OKqzHv_8A0UDOlT" scrolling="auto" allowfullscreen="" style="display: block;margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto;max-width: 100%;" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" width="540" height="305" frameborder="0"></iframe></span><br></p><h2 dir="ltr"><span style='font-family: "PT Sans", serif; font-size: 26px; font-weight: 700; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);'>References</span></h2><p id="isPasted">1. Oravec HA, Zeng X, Asnani VM. Design and characterization of GRC-1: A soil for Lunar Terramechanics testing in earth-ambient conditions [Internet]. Pergamon; 2010 [cited 2023 May 9]. Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022489810000388&nbsp;</p><p id="isPasted">2. Oravec HA, Zeng X, Asnani VM. Design and characterization of GRC-1: A soil for Lunar Terramechanics testing in earth-ambient conditions [Internet]. Pergamon; 2010 [cited 2023 May 9]. Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022489810000388</p>

Space startup Astrobotic mimics the moon's surface material and tests various designs of new moon rovers.

Engineering Space. Episode 1: Developing lightweight rovers for lunar surface exploration

<section id="isPasted"><p><strong>Team Polar, a student team at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), took their first rover to perform research in the Norwegian snow in the first week of January. The team is dedicated to developing an independent rover that can perform Antarctic research. This is their first working prototype and the team is eager to set a benchmark for future developments. They will present their findings and the rover itself on the reveal event, January 20, 2023.</strong></p></section><section tabindex="-1"><p>The Earth is facing its biggest problem in centuries: climate change. To fight climate change, we need to understand better the factors behind climate change. However, understanding it requires gathering information about our planet in places where nature is still pristine and more or less unaffected by climate change, as well as places where the consequences of global warming and climate change can be observed first-hand. Circumstances like that are usually found in extremely cold, and remote environments like the Arctics, Antarctica, and the oldest glaciers. At the moment, research is often carried out inefficiently and in very expensive and unsustainable ways.</p><p><a href="https://teampolar.org/" target="_blank">Team Polar</a> wants to create an alternative way to do all kinds of environmental, extensive research in the coldest places of our planet by developing an unmanned rover. This rover will eventually operate and perform research all by itself - similar to how the Martian rovers operate on the surface of Mars - and collect invaluable data about the effects of climate change. The team started its mission in 2018 and now presents its first working prototype: the rover &lsquo;Ice Cube&rsquo;.</p><h2><strong>Research in the snow</strong></h2><p>Development of the rover took place at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, a country notoriously devoid of deep snow most winters these days. That&rsquo;s why the team took their rover to Trondheim in Norway, to see how their first rover &lsquo;Ice Cube&rsquo; performs in the snow. &ldquo;We can test a lot of things in our lab, but not how the rover drives in the snow, how the solar panels handle the snow and temperatures, and how cold it will get inside the rover and how quickly it becomes very cold,&rdquo; explains team manager Laurenz Edelmann.</p><p>&ldquo;We have built our first rover with off-the-shelf components. That may or may not present some challenges for us. And, we may find that certain components will need to be custom-made and designed for future rover models. That&rsquo;s why this rover will be a benchmark for us and for future teams.&rdquo; The rover will be remote controlled for now, allowing the team to hand-pick the locations they want to study on this trip. This allowed the team to gather essential insights that can help the team to ensure that their next rover will be fit for a mission to Antarctica.</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 768px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1674079732566-csm_740c39b4-f736-414a-9c37-377bf1b2a7b9_368fa77a48.jpg" style="width: 300px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner">Rover Ice Cube. Photo: Laurenz Edelmann, team POLAR&nbsp;</span></span></span></p><h2 id="isPasted"><strong>Inspiring other teams</strong></h2><p>The team was in Norway to run their experiments from January 4<sup>th</sup> until January &nbsp;8<sup>th</sup>. There, they saw their rover drive through the snow like a natural. They also gained a insights in which components worked fine, and the handful of items that broke and needed replacing. &ldquo;Overall, we were super impressed with the way Ice Cube tackled the snow and handled itself,&rdquo; says Edelmann. &ldquo;We gathered valuable data, and great footage to present at our event.&rdquo; There was also time set aside on the return journey to the Netherlands to visit other universities. &ldquo;We love to maintain good relations with other student teams at technical universities in Europe. That&rsquo;s why we made sure to present our rover at the universities of Trondheim (NTNU), Kopenhagen (DTU), and Braunschweig (NFF),&rdquo; explains Edelmann.</p><p>&ldquo;We hope to inspire and inform local student teams how to tackle an ambitious goal, such as building an Antarctic research rover, successfully. And, of course, to forge new alliances and collaborations with our colleagues at other institutions.</p><p>In Eindhoven, student teams get access to a lot of facilities. We were happy to build our rover in the Innovation Space workshop, with its excellent facilities and experts to coach us. Our partners also helped make this possible with funds and materials. This trip wouldn&rsquo;t have been possible without sponsoring from the University Fund Eindhoven (UFe) and EuroTech Universities.&rdquo;</p><h2><strong>Meet the team and their rover</strong></h2><p>On Friday January 20<sup>th</sup>, the team presents their rover &lsquo;Ice Cube&rsquo; to the world after 2 years of design and development. This is a unique opportunity to see the rover up close, meet the team, and ask the researchers, scientists, adventurers, and explorers questions about their work on the rover. The reveal will take place at 4 pm in the Blauwe Zaal in the Auditorium building on the TU/e campus&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tue.nl/en/our-university/calendar-and-events/20-01-2023-teampolarprototyperevealevent/" target="_blank">and tickets are already available</a>.</p><p>&ldquo;We have a great event planned and are looking forward to showcasing the rover, sharing footage of our trip, and discussing opportunities for collaboration with those present at the launch event,&rdquo; says Nikolett Marton, team Polar&rsquo;s marketing manager.</p><hr><p>This article was first published here:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tue.nl/en/news-and-events/news-overview/12-01-2023-antarctic-rover-performs-research-in-the-snow/" id="isPasted" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.tue.nl/en/news-and-events/news-overview/12-01-2023-antarctic-rover-performs-research-in-the-snow/</a></p></section>

Team POLAR's rover Ice Cube in the Norwegian snow. Photo: Laurenz Edelmann, team POLAR

On January 20, Team POLAR showcases its first vehicle for independent climate research in icy, inhospitable regions such as the North and South Poles.

Antarctic rover performs research in the snow

<p id="isPasted">The origin of Mars&rsquo; two moons, Phobos and Deimos, is still unclear. To unravel this mystery, the <a href="https://global.jaxa.jp/" target="_blank" title="External link Japanese space agency JAXA">Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)</a> Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission is scheduled to launch in 2024. A German-French rover will be on board to explore the surface of the 27-kilometre-diameter Phobos in detail. The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum f&uuml;r Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) has now completed a major part of the rover. The CFRP structure, which was created in collaboration with several DLR institutes, including the uprighting and locomotion system, was delivered this week from <a href="https://www.dlr.de/content/en/sites/bremen.html" target="_blank" title="Bremen">Bremen</a> to the French space agency CNES in Toulouse. Here it will be completed by the summer of 2023 with the installation of all instruments and systems. The MMX rover will then also be equipped with its miniRAD radiometer and RAX spectrometer. Both instruments were built at the DLR site in <a href="https://www.dlr.de/content/en/sites/berlin.html" target="_blank" title="Berlin">Berlin</a> and sent to Toulouse beforehand.</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 768px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1668515096146-cfrp-structure-of-the-mmx-rover-with-uprighting-and-locomotion-system.jpg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner">CFRP structure of the MMX rover with uprighting and locomotion system. Credit: &copy; DLR. All rights reserved</span></span></span></p><p>&quot;With the MMX rover, we are breaking new ground in terms of technology, because never before has an exploration vehicle with wheels travelled on a small celestial body with only one-thousandth of the Earth&#39;s gravitational pull,&quot; says Dr Markus Grebenstein from the <a href="https://www.dlr.de/content/en/institutes/institute-of-robotics-and-mechatronics.html" target="_blank" title="Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics">DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics</a> in Oberpfaffenhofen. &quot;As the rover free-falls onto Phobos following separation from the spacecraft, it will perform several &lsquo;somersaults&rsquo; upon touchdown without damage and come to rest in an unpredictable position. From this situation, it must autonomously upright itself with the help of the propulsion system and unfold its solar panels,&quot; Grebenstein, DLR&#39;s project manager for the MMX rover, continues. &quot;Finally, it will travel very carefully at only a few millimetres per second in order to retain contact with the ground with its special wheels despite the low gravity,&quot; adds Stefan Barthelmes from the <a href="https://www.dlr.de/content/en/institutes/institute-of-system-dynamics-and-control.html" target="_blank" title="Institute of System Dynamics and Control">DLR Institute of System Dynamics and Control</a> in Oberpfaffenhofen. The uprighting and locomotion system was developed and built at DLR&#39;s <a href="https://www.dlr.de/content/en/institutes/robotics-and-mechatronics-center.html" target="_blank" title="Robotics and Mechatronics Center">Robotics and Mechatronics Center</a> in Oberpfaffenhofen. The <a href="https://www.dlr.de/content/en/institutes/institute-of-composite-structures-and-adaptive-systems.html" target="_blank" title="Institute of Composite Structures and Adaptive Systems">DLR Institute of Composite Structures and Adaptive Systems</a> contributed the particularly lightweight carbon structure.</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 768px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1668514945612-the-raman-spectrometer-rax.jpg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner">The Raman spectrometer RAX (RAman spectroscopy for MMX) is a development led by the DLR Institute of Optical Sensor Systems with the participation of JAXA and the Spanish space agency INTA. RAX will determine the mineralogical composition of Phobos&#39; surface along the rover&#39;s route. Credit: DLR (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)</span></span></span></p><h2 id="isPasted">Measuring surface porosity and composition</h2><p>Upon separation from the MMX spacecraft, the 25-kilogram rover will descend about 50 metres to the surface of Phobos. This <a href="https://www.dlr.de/content/en/articles/news/2020/03/20200930_in-free-fall-to-the-martian-moon-phobos.html" target="_blank" title="First tests for landing the Martian Moons eXploration Rover">has already been tested in initial drop tests</a> at the <a href="https://www.dlr.de/content/en/institutes/institute-of-space-systems.html" target="_blank" title="Institute of Space Systems">DLR Institute of Space Systems</a>, where integration has now also taken place. The rover will explore the physical and mineralogical properties of the moon&rsquo;s surface for 100 days. The two DLR instruments miniRAD and RAX will be used for this purpose. The miniRAD radiometer from the <a href="https://www.dlr.de/content/en/institutes/institute-of-planetary-research.html" target="_blank" title="Institute of Planetary Research">DLR Institute of Planetary Research</a> will determine the surface temperature using infrared measurements. It will also allow conclusions to be drawn about the porosity of the surface material for comparison with other asteroid and comet samples. The Raman spectrometer RAX (RAman spectroscopy for MMX) is a development under the leadership of the <a href="https://www.dlr.de/content/en/institutes/institute-of-optical-sensor-systems.html" target="_blank" title="Institute of Optical Sensor Systems">DLR Institute of Optical Sensor Systems</a> with the participation of JAXA and the Spanish Instituto Nacional de T&eacute;cnica Aeroespacial (INTA). RAX will determine the mineralogical composition of Phobos&rsquo; surface along the rover&#39;s route. The minerals of a celestial body are closely related to its formation and history, and comparisons with measurements taken by other rovers on Mars will help scientists to better understand the martian system with its moons.</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 768px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1668514985799-the-radiometer-minirad.jpg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner">The radiometer miniRAD from the DLR Institute of Planetary Research will determine the surface temperature using infrared measurements. In addition, it will allow conclusions to be drawn about the porosity of the surface material in order to compare it with asteroid and comet samples. Credit: DLR (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)</span></span></span></p><p id="isPasted">In addition to the two DLR instruments, two cameras attached to the wheels to keep an eye on the wheels and the ground, as well as two cameras for navigation, will be installed at CNES in Toulouse over the next few months. The engineering teams are also installing the solar panels, the power system, the radio system for contact with Earth, and the on-board computer in the rover. Then, the complete rover will undergo extensive testing with regard to its functionality and its resistance to the vibrations of the rocket launch and the extreme temperature fluctuations of more than 200 degrees Celsius on Phobos. The MMX rover will complete the tests under space conditions together with the Mechanical and Electrical Connection and Support System (MECSS) to the spacecraft, which is also provided by DLR.</p><h2>Bringing a martian moon sample to Earth</h2><p>The MMX spacecraft consists of three modules. The exploration module has landing legs, samplers and some instruments as well as the MMX rover on board. The exploration module is connected to the return module with the sample return capsule, which in turn is connected to a propulsion module housing propellant tanks and rocket engines. The launch of the Japanese spacecraft is currently planned for 2024 with an H-3 rocket from the Japanese Space Center in Tanegashima. Approximately one year after leaving Earth, the probe will enter orbit around Mars in 2025 to observe Phobos and Deimos. This will be followed by a quasi-orbit around the martian moon Phobos, where it will collect scientific data, set down the MMX rover it carries and take a sample from the lunar surface. After taking the sample, the spacecraft will return to Earth with the material collected on Phobos. The landing of the MMX rover on Phobos is planned for 2027, and the return to Earth with the samples in 2029. The rover&#39;s measurements and images on the Phobos surface will also serve as a reference for the orbiter instruments and help prepare the landing of the exploration module for sampling.</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 768px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1668515147660-integration-of-the-mmx-rover.jpg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner">Integration of the MMX rover. Credit: &copy; DLR. All rights reserved</span></span></span></p><h2>The origin of fear and terror</h2><p>In Greek mythology, Phobos and Deimos were the companions of Ares, the god of war, who in Roman antiquity had his counterpart in Mars, the god of war. They were discovered in 1877 by the American astronomer Asaph Hall. Due to their small size (Phobos is 27 kilometres in diameter and Deimos 15 kilometres), both moons are irregularly shaped and resemble asteroids. Thus, one theory is that Mars simply captured the two moons in the past, possible in the asteroid belt. However, both moons orbit Mars near the ecliptic plane on which all planets and most of their moons move around the Sun. In addition, both orbits are almost circular. Such a coincidence would be difficult to account for under the &#39;captured asteroids&rsquo; theory. This could be explained if Phobos and Deimos were remnants of a huge meteorite impact on Mars. MMX aims to solve this long-discussed mystery of planetary science. The formation of the Mars system is also key to better understanding the processes of planet formation in the Solar System. In any case, traces of Martian rocks are likely to be found on the surface of Phobos, which landed on Phobos as ejecta from later asteroid impacts. This means that the samples from Phobos could also bring material from Mars to Earth in the return capsule and thus into terrestrial laboratories.</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 768px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1668515034341-mars-with-its-moons-deimos-and-phobos.jpg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner">Mars&#39; two moons, Deimos (above) and Phobos, are the targets of the MMX mission. Due to their small size (Phobos 27 kilometres, Deimos 15 kilometres), both moons are irregularly shaped. Their origin is still an unsolved mystery in planetary research. (image montage) Credit: DLR (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)</span></span></span></p><hr><p id="isPasted"><strong>MMX &ndash; Martian Moons eXploration</strong></p><p>MMX is a mission of the Japanese space agency JAXA with contributions from NASA, ESA, CNES (the French space agency) and DLR. CNES (Centre National d&#39;&Eacute;tudes Spatiales) and the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum f&uuml;r Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) are jointly contributing a 25-kilogram rover to the Martian Moons eXploration Mission (MMX). The Franco-German MMX rover is being designed and built under the joint leadership of CNES and DLR. In particular, DLR is responsible for the development of the rover&#39;s landing gear, including the lightweight body, as well as the entire uprighting and locomotion system. DLR is also contributing the connection adapter to the MMX spacecraft and providing a Raman spectrometer and a radiometer as scientific experiments. These will analyse the surface composition and texture on Phobos. CNES is making significant contributions with camera systems for spatial orientation and exploration on the surface, as well as for the study of mechanical soil properties. CNES is also developing the rover&#39;s central service module, including the on-board computer and the power and communications system. After the launch of the MMX mission, the rover will be operated by CNES control centres in Toulouse (France) and DLR in Cologne (Germany).</p><p>For DLR, the institutes of System Dynamics and Control, Composite Structures and Adaptive Systems, of Space Systems, of Optical Sensor Systems, of Planetary Research, for Software Technology and the Microgravity User Support Center (MUSC) are also involved under the leadership of the DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics.</p><p>The MMX mission is a continuation of an already long-standing successful cooperation between JAXA, CNES and DLR. It builds on the previous mission <a href="https://www.dlr.de/content/en/missions/mascot.html" target="_blank" title="MASCOT on board Hayabusa2">Hayabusa2</a>, in which JAXA sent a spacecraft to the asteroid Ryugu with the German-French MASCOT lander on board. <a href="https://www.dlr.de/content/en/articles/news/2018/4/20181003_mascot-lands-safely-ruygu.html" target="_blank" title="MASCOT lands safely on asteroid Ryugu">On 3 October 2018, MASCOT landed on Ryugu</a> and sent spectacular images of a landscape ridden with boulders and rocks, and virtually no dust. Hayabusa2 collected samples from Ryugu and brought them to Earth on 6 December 2020.</p>

The origin of Mars’ two moons, Phobos and Deimos, is still unclear. To unravel this mystery, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission is scheduled to launch in 2024.

A rover for Mars' moon Phobos

<p>This article was first published on <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2022/battery-free-wireless-underwater-camera-0926" id="isPasted" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">MIT News</a>. &nbsp;</p><hr><p id="isPasted">Scientists estimate that more than 95 percent of Earth&rsquo;s oceans have never been observed, which means we have seen less of our planet&rsquo;s ocean than we have the far side of the moon or the surface of Mars.</p><p>The high cost of powering an underwater camera for a long time, by tethering it to a research vessel or sending a ship to recharge its batteries, is a steep challenge preventing widespread undersea exploration.</p><p>MIT researchers have taken a major step to overcome this problem by developing a battery-free, wireless underwater camera that is about 100,000 times more energy-efficient than other undersea cameras. The device takes color photos, even in dark underwater environments, and transmits image data wirelessly through the water.</p><p>The autonomous camera is powered by sound. It converts mechanical energy from sound waves traveling through water into electrical energy that powers its imaging and communications equipment. After capturing and encoding image data, the camera also uses sound waves to transmit data to a receiver that reconstructs the image.&nbsp;</p><p>Because it doesn&rsquo;t need a power source, the camera could run for weeks on end before retrieval, enabling scientists to search remote parts of the ocean for new species. It could also be used to capture images of ocean pollution or monitor the health and growth of fish raised in aquaculture farms.</p><p>&ldquo;One of the most exciting applications of this camera for me personally is in the context of climate monitoring. We are building climate models, but we are missing data from over 95 percent of the ocean. This technology could help us build more accurate climate models and better understand how climate change impacts the underwater world,&rdquo; says Fadel Adib, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the Signal Kinetics group in the MIT Media Lab, and senior author of a new paper on the system.</p><p>Joining Adib on the paper are co-lead authors and Signal Kinetics group research assistants Sayed Saad Afzal, Waleed Akbar, and Osvy Rodriguez, as well as research scientist Unsoo Ha, and former group researchers Mario Doumet and Reza Ghaffarivardavagh. The paper is <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-33223-x" target="_blank">published today in <em>Nature Communications</em></a>.</p><p><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kyVZ1ll6_qY?&wmode=opaque&rel=0&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-gtm-yt-inspected-7="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" style="width: 768px; height: 433px;"></iframe></span></p><h2 id="isPasted"><strong>Going battery-free</strong></h2><p>To build a camera that could operate autonomously for long periods, the researchers needed a device that could harvest energy underwater on its own while consuming very little power.</p><p>The camera acquires energy using transducers made from piezoelectric materials that are placed around its exterior. Piezoelectric materials produce an electric signal when a mechanical force is applied to them. When a sound wave traveling through the water hits the transducers, they vibrate and convert that mechanical energy into electrical energy.</p><p>Those sound waves could come from any source, like a passing ship or marine life. The camera stores harvested energy until it has built up enough to power the electronics that take photos and communicate data.</p><p>To keep power consumption as a low as possible, the researchers used off-the-shelf, ultra-low-power imaging sensors. But these sensors only capture grayscale images. And since most underwater environments lack a light source, they needed to develop a low-power flash, too.</p><p>&ldquo;We were trying to minimize the hardware as much as possible, and that creates new constraints on how to build the system, send information, and perform image reconstruction. It took a fair amount of creativity to figure out how to do this,&rdquo; Adib says.</p><p>They solved both problems simultaneously using red, green, and blue LEDs. When the camera captures an image, it shines a red LED and then uses image sensors to take the photo. It repeats the same process with green and blue LEDs.</p><p>Even though the image looks black and white, the red, green, and blue colored light is reflected in the white part of each photo, Akbar explains. When the image data are combined in post-processing, the color image can be reconstructed.</p><p>&ldquo;When we were kids in art class, we were taught that we could make all colors using three basic colors. The same rules follow for color images we see on our computers. We just need red, green, and blue &mdash; these three channels &mdash; to construct color images,&rdquo; he says.</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 768px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1664333175160-MIT-Underwater-Camera-02.jpg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner">Fadel Adib (left) associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the Signal Kinetics group in the MIT Media Lab, and Research Assistant Waleed Akbar display the battery-free wireless underwater camera that their group developed. Image: Adam Glanzman</span></span></span></p><h2><strong>Sending data with sound</strong></h2><p>Once image data are captured, they are encoded as bits (1s and 0s) and sent to a receiver one bit at a time using a process called underwater backscatter. The receiver transmits sound waves through the water to the camera, which acts as a mirror to reflect those waves. The camera either reflects a wave back to the receiver or changes its mirror to an absorber so that it does not reflect back.</p><p>A hydrophone next to the transmitter senses if a signal is reflected back from the camera. If it receives a signal, that is a bit-1, and if there is no signal, that is a bit-0. The system uses this binary information to reconstruct and post-process the image.</p><p>&ldquo;This whole process, since it just requires a single switch to convert the device from a nonreflective state to a reflective state, consumes five orders of magnitude less power than typical underwater communications systems,&rdquo; Afzal says.</p><p>The researchers tested the camera in several underwater environments. In one, they captured color images of plastic bottles floating in a New Hampshire pond. They were also able to take such high-quality photos of an African starfish that tiny tubercles along its arms were clearly visible. The device was also effective at repeatedly imaging the underwater plant<em>&nbsp;Aponogeton ulvaceus</em> in a dark environment over the course of a week to monitor its growth.</p><p>Now that they have demonstrated a working prototype, the researchers plan to enhance the device so it is practical for deployment in real-world settings. They want to increase the camera&rsquo;s memory so it could capture photos in real-time, stream images, or even shoot underwater video.</p><p>They also want to extend the camera&rsquo;s range. They successfully transmitted data 40 meters from the receiver, but pushing that range wider would enable the camera to be used in more underwater settings.</p><p>&ldquo;This will open up great opportunities for research both in low-power IoT devices as well as underwater monitoring and research,&rdquo; says Haitham Al-Hassanieh, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who was not involved with this research.</p><hr><p>&quot;Reprinted with permission of&nbsp;<a href="https://news.mit.edu/2022/battery-free-wireless-underwater-camera-0926" id="isPasted" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">MIT News</a>&quot;&nbsp;</p>

A battery-free, wireless underwater camera developed at MIT could have many uses, including climate modeling. “We are missing data from over 95 percent of the ocean. This technology could help us build more accurate climate models and better understand how climate change impacts the underwater world,” says Associate Professor Fadel Adib. Image: Adam Glanzman

The device could help scientists explore unknown regions of the ocean, track pollution, or monitor the effects of climate change.

Engineers build a battery-free, wireless underwater camera

<p id="isPasted">Tests conducted by Cornell and the U.S. Navy used new algorithms to outperform state-of-the-art programming for autonomous underwater sonar imaging, significantly improving the speed and accuracy for identifying objects such as explosive mines, sunken ships, airplane black boxes, pipelines and corrosion on ship hulls.</p><p>Sea reconnaissance is filled with challenges that include murky waters, unpredictable conditions and vast areas of subaquatic terrain. Sonar is the preferred imaging method in most cases, but acoustic waves can be difficult to decipher, often requiring different angles and views of an object before it can be identified.</p><p>&ldquo;If you have a lot of targets and they&rsquo;re distributed over a large region, it takes a long time to classify them all,&rdquo; said Silvia Ferrari, the John Brancaccio Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, who led the research published May 24 in the journal&nbsp;<a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9780576" target="_blank">IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering</a>. &ldquo;Sometimes an autonomous underwater vehicle won&#39;t be able to finish the mission because it has limited battery life.&rdquo;</p><p>To improve the capability of these vehicles, Ferrari&rsquo;s research group teamed up with the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Panama City, and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Newport, Virginia. The team created and tested a new imaging approach called informative multi-view planning, which integrates information about where objects might be located with sonar processing algorithms that decide the optimal views, and the most efficient path to obtain those views. The planning algorithms take into account the sonar sensor&rsquo;s field-of-view geometry along with each target&rsquo;s position and orientation, and can make on-the-fly adjustments based on current sea conditions.</p><p>In computer simulated tests, the research team&rsquo;s algorithms competed against state-of-the-art imaging methods to complete multi-target classification tasks. The new algorithms were able to complete the tasks in just half the time, and with a 93% improvement in accuracy of identifying targets. In a second test in which the targets were more randomly scattered, the new algorithms performed the imaging task more than 11% faster, and with 33% more accuracy.</p><p>&ldquo;Until these algorithms, we were never able to account for the orientation and some of the more complicated automatic target variables that influence the quality of the images,&rdquo; Ferrari said. &ldquo;Now we can accomplish the same imaging tasks with higher accuracy and in less time.&rdquo;</p><p>As a final test, the algorithms were programmed into a REMUS-100 autonomous underwater vehicle tasked with identifying 40 targets scattered within an area of St. Andrew Bay off the coast of Florida. Performing in its first undersea trial, the new algorithms achieved the same speed as the state-of-the-art algorithms, and with equal or superior classification performance.</p><p>&ldquo;Demonstrating the developed algorithms using an actual vehicle in sea trials is a very exciting achievement,&rdquo; said Jane Jaejeong Shin, Ph.D. &rsquo;21, who is now an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Florida. &ldquo;This result shows the potential of these algorithms to be extended and applied more generally in similar underwater survey missions.&rdquo;</p>

Tests conducted by Cornell and the U.S. Navy used new algorithms to outperform state-of-the-art programming for autonomous underwater sonar imaging, significantly improving the speed and accuracy for identifying objects such as explosive mines, sunken ships, airplane black boxes, pipelines, etc.

Cornell, US Navy raise bar for autonomous underwater imaging

<p id="isPasted">Wireless energy transmission, the dream of visionaries including Nikola Tesla with his Wardenclyffe Tower experiments, is today a reality. From completely-sealed electric toothbrushes to smartphones capable of charging when just thrown down onto a mat at the end of the day, there are plenty of examples of commercially-viable wireless power systems in everyday life &mdash; and still more on the horizon, including proposals for energising electric vehicles while they travel or robots as they roam.</p><p>The majority of these, however, rely on electromagnetic transmission &mdash; an approach which works perfectly well over the air, but begins to encounter difficulties when faced with transmission through other media such as living tissue or water. What could be an ideal way to charge implanted electronics or undersea sensor networks becomes significantly more challenging &mdash; which is why a team of researchers from a number of Korean institutions have turned to acoustic energy transfer instead, switching from electromagnetic radiation to ultrasound as the energy source.</p><h1>The sound of power</h1><p>The team, led by the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), isn&rsquo;t the first to look at &mdash; or even succeed at &mdash; wireless energy transmission via ultrasound. Previous approaches, however, have been extremely limited in either the distance over which the energy can be transmitted or the amount of energy usable at the receiver &mdash; or, typically, both.</p><p>The prototype developed by the researchers, by contrast, offers a considerable improvement over the state-of-the-art in both respects. Built using a five-layer design &mdash; a flexible electrode upper, a fixed area, a triboelectric layer, a novel ferroelectric layer, and a bottom electrode &mdash; the receiver sheets generate energy through movement induced by a 40kHz ultrasound signal, but represent only part of the gain in performance reported in the work.</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 302px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjUyODEzNjUzNzY0LWVzczQuanBnIiwiZWRpdHMiOnsicmVzaXplIjp7IndpZHRoIjo5NTAsImZpdCI6ImNvdmVyIn19fQ==" style="width: 300px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib" alt="A diagram of a prototype Acoustic Energy Transmission (AET) receiver, showing the five layers: Flexible electronics, fixed part, triboelectric layer, ferroelectric layer, and bottom electrode. A photograph of actual prototypes are seen to the right, marked with an outer fixed area frame and an inner active area."><span class="fr-inner">The prototype AETs developed by the KIST-led team are made up of five layers, and produce energy from movement as triboelectric generators.<br id="isPasted"></span></span></span></p><p>The remainder, the team explains, comes from a switch from a sinusoidal acoustic wave to a square wave &mdash; an approach which, combined with the addition of piezoelectric PNM-PT crystals to the receiver as the ferroelectric layer, considerably boosts the output voltage available to connected electronics. Interestingly, the researchers conclude that the boosted voltage comes not from the piezoelectric effect directly but from a boost to the triboelectric effect.</p><p>&ldquo;It can be seen that our device is mode-free,&rdquo; the team explains, &ldquo;and frequency independent. This is vital for its practical use, because unlike piezoelectric type receivers, our device does not necessitate a precisely matched ultrasound transducer.&rdquo;</p><h1>Switched on by sound</h1><p>To prove not only the core concept but also its applicability in simulations of various real-world use cases, the team built receiver prototypes and placed them in a range of materials: A lump of pork, used as a stand-in for human tissue in the case of recharging or directly powering implanted electronic devices; metal, acrylic, medium-density fiberboard (MDF), and plywood, to show its ability to transmit energy through a range of housing materials including those which would block electromagnetic radiation; and a tank of water, to showcase the system&rsquo;s potential for powering sub-aquatic drones or sensor networks ill-suited to other wireless energy transfer approaches.</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 302px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjUyODEzNjY3MDY4LWVzczIuanBnIiwiZWRpdHMiOnsicmVzaXplIjp7IndpZHRoIjo5NTAsImZpdCI6ImNvdmVyIn19fQ==" style="width: 300px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib" alt="Photographs of three prototypes: A trapezoidal 3D-printed prototype with five receiver faces connected to an electronic circuit and a CC2650 development board; the same receiver connected to two 200-LED matrices, with an ultrasonic transducer postioned 6cm away above a water tank; and the same receiver with wireless sensors fitted transmitting to a tablet PC over Bluetooth with the transducer 6cm away above the same water tank."><span class="fr-inner">The team built several prototypes to prove the device&#39;s capabilities for useful energy transfer, including Bluetooth-connected sensor networks located under 6cm of water.</span></span></span></p><p>The results are undeniably impressive. The body-implanted version proved capable of delivering sufficient power to drive implantable electronic devices without damage to the surrounding tissue and with the ultrasound emissions kept well within FDA-approved limits for use on patients; the system successfully transmitted though all the housing materials, representing the bulk of materials used in commercial and industrial electronic systems; and energy transmission worked perfectly through water.</p><p>The latter experiments are worth further analysis. The team created a 3D-printed trapezoidal structure with prototype energy receiving sheets making up five of its faces, then fitted a range of wireless sensors designed for water quality monitoring &mdash; measuring metrics including temperature, carbon dioxide levels, pressure, and humidity. These were then powered using a transmitter 6cm (around 2.4&quot;) away &mdash; &ldquo;an order longer,&rdquo; the team notes, &ldquo;than the previous report.&rdquo;</p><p>In further testing the team directly drove two matrices of 200 LEDs each at a brightness high enough to be observed under laboratory lighting, before concluding with a &ldquo;conclusive demonstration&rdquo; as to the approach&#39;s suitability for practical use: The replacement of the battery in a commercial Texas Instruments CC2650 Bluetooth Sensor Tag with an acoustic energy receiver which was capable of triggering Bluetooth transmission of sensor readings to a nearby tablet computer within a second of the ultrasound transmitter being energized.</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 302px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjUyODEzNjc2Mzc0LWVzczMuanBnIiwiZWRpdHMiOnsicmVzaXplIjp7IndpZHRoIjo5NTAsImZpdCI6ImNvdmVyIn19fQ==" style="width: 300px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib" alt="A line graph showing the voltage produced by the AET system with four design changes: Only PTFE and sinusoidal wave; PTFE, <111> PMN-PT (up) and sinusoidal wave; only PTFE and square wave; and PTFE, <111> PMN-PT (up) and square wave. With each change, the voltage can be seen increasing in turn."><span class="fr-inner">The team&#39;s approach makes two key changes to the previous state-of-the-art, the use of square wave signals and the addition of a ferroelectric layer, with excellent results.</span></span></span></p><p>&ldquo;This study demonstrated that electronic devices can be driven by wireless power charging via ultrasonic waves,&rdquo; says Hyun-Cheol Song, PhD, who led the project. &ldquo;If the stability and efficiency of the device are further improved in the future, this technology can be applied to supply power wirelessly to implantable sensors or deep-sea sensors, in which replacing batteries is cumbersome.&rdquo;</p><p>The team&rsquo;s work has been published under closed-access terms in the journal <cite><a href="https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2022/EE/D1EE02623B" target="_blank">Energy &amp; Environmental Science</a></cite>.</p><h1>Reference</h1><p>Hyun Soo Kim, &nbsp;Sunghoon Hur, Dong-Gyu Lee, Joonchul Shin, Huimin Qiao, Seunguk Mun, Hoontaek Lee, Wonkyu Moon, Yunseok Kim, Jeong Min Baik, Chong-Yun Kang, Jong Hoon Jung, and Hyun-Cheol Song: <cite>Ferroelectrically augmented contact electrification enables efficient acoustic energy transfer through liquid and solid media, Energy &amp; Environmental Science, Iss. 3 2022</cite>. DOI <a href="https://doi.org/10.1039/D1EE02623B" target="_blank">10.1039/D1EE02623B</a>.</p>

An artist's impression of the proposed AET system being used to drive both underwater sensor networks and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), using nothing but ultrasound signals from a passing boat on the surface.

A team of researchers in Korea has been working on functional acoustic energy transmission (AET) systems, and their latest paper details a major breakthrough: Prototypes capable of powering LEDs, sensors, and Bluetooth transmitters at range and through materials include metal, tissue, and water.

A move to ultrasonic acoustics for wireless energy transmission could power implants, underwater sensors, and more

<p id="isPasted">Microplastics are of growing concern, both for human health and the broader ecology. With millions of tonnes of plastic waste entering the marine ecosystem ever year, solutions are needed urgently &mdash; and while initiatives to prevent the waste from entering the ecosystem in the first place, by moving away from single-use plastics and implementing stronger recycling requirements, are a vital step, they do nothing for the waste already floating around our oceans.</p><p>Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), however, can help address the latter. Equipped with suitable grabbers, AUVs could roam the seas to locate plastic waste and remove it for recycling or more proper disposal &mdash; but only if they can recognize it. That&rsquo;s where a team of researchers, working with the United Kingdom&rsquo;s Natural Environment Research Council, aims to help: Improving computer vision systems to give AUVs better skills in recognizing plastic waste in underwater environments.</p><h1>Smarter vision</h1><p>The researchers envision the control system of a plastic-hunting AUV as three blocks: An image enhancement block, specifically designed for the murky low-light conditions found under the sea; a recognition block, capable of discerning plastic waste from other underwater objects and locating them accurately; and a guidance block, which navigates the vehicle to the waste and coordinates its collection.</p><p>Seeing the potential for boosted performance, first author Federico Zocco and colleagues concentrated their efforts on the image enhancement and recognition blocks. The team started by applying a state-of-the-art object detector class, EfficientDets, to the task of recognizing plastic waste and differentiating it from other undersea objects like fish.</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 302px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjQ5OTY2OTMxNDIxLWRlYnJpczMuanBnIiwiZWRpdHMiOnsicmVzaXplIjp7IndpZHRoIjo5NTAsImZpdCI6ImNvdmVyIn19fQ==" style="width: 300px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib" alt="A picture showing a feed from an underwater camera with visible waste plastic, passing into a box marked &quot;underwater image enhancement&quot; before the enhanced images are passed to a box marked &quot;recognition&quot; and then the recognition outputs passed to a box marked &quot;guidance, navigation and control systems of both vehicle and gripper.&quot; A further box below shows the difference between three recognition systems: a classifier, with a class output; a detector, with class and position outputs; and a segmenter, with class, position, and shape outputs. A 3D model of an autonomous underwater vehicle is seen to the bottom-right."><span class="fr-inner">Automated cleanup of plastic ocean waste could receive a boost from a new, more accurate version of EfficientDets running on autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).<br></span></span></span></p><p>Created by a team working at Google Research, EfficientDets are designed to offer accurate object detection at a low latency &mdash; offering anything up to a ninefold size reduction and a forty-twofold drop in computational requirements than previous approaches. Zocco and colleagues, however, believed it possible to improve upon this &mdash; particularly in terms of specializing EfficientDets for the task at hand.</p><p>Initially, the team concentrated on architectural modifications: Changing the number of weighted bi-directional feature pyramid network (BiFPN) layers, the number of convolutional layers, and scaling up parent detectors in order to find the best balance between latency and accuracy. Then, the resulting improved EfficientDets were trained on the Trash-ICRA19 dataset with biological, plastic, and remote-operated vehicle classes &mdash; before being trained again on a custom dataset, In-Water Plastic Bags and Bottles (WPBB), with 900 fully-annotated images of the target items recorded in a testing pool by a Chasing Dory drone.</p><h1>Better vision</h1><p>In addition to improving the object detection block, the team also investigated how the images themselves can be improved &mdash; taking the low-light captures of a AUV&rsquo;s camera feed and making them better-suited to object detection and classification.</p><p>The team took the L<sup>2</sup>UWE framework detailed by Tunai Porto Marques and Alexandra Branzan Albu in 2020, designed for efficient enhancement of low-light underwater imagery, and applied it to a subset Trash-ICRA19 images which had been modified for simulated low-light conditions. While an improvement in accuracy was noted, it came at a considerable cost: &ldquo;L<sup>2</sup>UWE is too computationally demanding for real-time applications,&rdquo; the team noted, with the inference time per image reaching over 11 seconds when the framework was applied as a pre-processing step.</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 302px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjQ5OTY2OTQ3OTM5LWRlYnJpczEuanBnIiwiZWRpdHMiOnsicmVzaXplIjp7IndpZHRoIjo5NTAsImZpdCI6ImNvdmVyIn19fQ==" style="width: 300px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib" alt="A graph showing a comparison between standard and improved EfficientDets: The improved version can be seen outperforming the standard version at each measurement, without an increase in latency. Below the graph is an example of a dark input image being processed through low-light image enhancement then through the detector; the final image shows an eel labelled &quot;bio: 91%&quot; and some debris labelled &quot;plastic: 80%.&quot;"><span class="fr-inner">The team&#39;s approach boosted the accuracy of EfficientDets measurably, without an increase in latency.<br></span></span></span></p><p>A simpler approach was then tried: Just boosting the brightness of the image on a per-pixel basis, with no thought to enhancement at all. Doing so showed a notable increase in accuracy, though without analyzing each image and determining the amount of brightening required it&rsquo;s a rough approach at best.</p><p>&ldquo;A more efficient approach,&rdquo; the team notes, &ldquo;is to tune the value of <em>c</em> [the increase in brightness applied to images] offline using genetic algorithms or particle swarm optimization and subsequently use it for low-light real-time marine debris detection within an automation pipeline.&rdquo;</p><p>The team&rsquo;s overall results show promise: With EfficientDets already being considered state-of-the-art, a reported 1.2-2.6 per cent increase in average precision for the task of plastic waste recognition underwater with no increase in latency is a notable achievement &mdash; and the team has made it possible for others to improve the approach still further by publishing both the WPBB dataset and the project&rsquo;s source code <a href="https://github.com/fedezocco/MoreEffEffDetsAndWPBB-TensorFlow" target="_blank">on GitHub</a> under the permissive MIT license.</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 302px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjQ5OTY2OTU3NzYzLWRlYnJpczIuanBnIiwiZWRpdHMiOnsicmVzaXplIjp7IndpZHRoIjo5NTAsImZpdCI6ImNvdmVyIn19fQ==" style="width: 300px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib" alt="Images of plastic bottles and bags floating in an underwater tank, captured from an autonomous underwater vehicle. Each has been labelled &quot;plastic bottle&quot; or &quot;plastic bag&quot; by the improved EfficientDets with confidence ranging from 95 to 99 per cent, with one 43 per cent outlier."><span class="fr-inner">The WPBB dataset, captured using a commercial AUV in a tank and with real examples of waste plastics, has been released under a permissive license along with full source code for the project.</span></span></span></p><p>The team&rsquo;s next step: Implementing the proposed detection pipeline on a physical AUV, integrated with the navigation and gripper control system for automated waste collection.</p><p>The paper detailing the team&rsquo;s work has been made available <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.07155" target="_blank">on Cornell&rsquo;s arXiv preprint server</a> under open-access terms.</p><h1>References</h1><p>Federico Zocco, Ching-I Huang, Hsueh-Cheng Wang, Mohammad Omar Khyam, and Mien Van: <cite>Towards More Efficient EfficientDets and Low-Light Real-Time Marine Debris Detection, to be submitted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters</cite>. Preprint DOI <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.07155" target="_blank">arXiv:2203.07155</a> [cs.CV].</p><p>Mingxing Tan, Ruoming Pang, and Quoc V. Le: <cite>EfficientDet: Scalable and Efficient Object Detection, Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2020</cite>. DOI <a href="https://doi.org/10.1109/cvpr42600.2020.01079" target="_blank">10.1109/cvpr42600.2020.01079</a>.</p><p>Tunai Porto Marques and Alexandra Branzan Albu: <cite>L<sup>2</sup>UWE: A Framework for the Efficient Enhancement of Low-Light Underwater Images Using Local Contrast and Multi-Scale Fusion, Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2020</cite>. DOI <a href="https://doi.org/10.1109/CVPRW50498.2020.00277" target="_blank">10.1109/CVPRW50498.2020.00277</a>.</p>

Plastic waste running from rivers to the seas is a growing problem, which will take a major clean-up to solve. Enter the AUVs.

With growing concern over microplastics from ocean waste, autonomous underwater vehicles — AUVs — have been proposed as a tool for cleaning up our seas, but only if they can pick the plastics out from the fish: Enter these tweaked EfficientDets, boosting accuracy for the task.

Automated ocean waste retrival the target for new, specialized open-source EfficientDets

<p id="isPasted">An ROV camera is any visual imaging system that can be used on <a href="https://blueprintlab.com/blog/what-is-an-underwater-rov/" target="_blank">underwater ROVs</a> to provide the operator with a perception of the operating environment. The depth rating for an <a href="https://blueprintlab.com/products/underwater-rov-camera/" target="_blank">ROV camera</a> usually starts at 300m.</p><p>Most ROVs have a main forward-facing camera for control of the vehicle. Some ROVs will then have additional, auxiliary cameras to provide another point of view. These cameras are sometimes mounted on another point of the vehicle or extended out from the vehicle using a &lsquo;boom mount&rsquo; (e.g. a camera on a pole sticking out to the side). If an ROV manipulator is in use, this manipulator will sometimes have a camera at the end-effector providing yet another point of view of the workspace. One should remember that underwater vision systems are usually monocular and therefore do not provide distance information (try catching a ball with one eye closed); development in this area using stereo vision and other sensors is a hot topic in underwater robotics and is currently being pursued by Blueprint Lab to enable more advanced use of <a href="https://blueprintlab.com/products/manipulators/" target="_blank">manipulator arms</a> and <a href="https://blueprintlab.com/products/rov-grippers/" target="_blank">ROV grippers</a>.</p><h2><style type="text/css" id="isPasted"></style><style type="text/css"></style><span data-sheets-formula="=PROPER(R[-1]C[0])" data-sheets-userformat='{"2":320,"9":2,"11":3}' data-sheets-value='{"1":2,"2":"What Are The Different Types Of Rov Camera?"}'>What Are The Different Types Of ROV Camera?</span></h2><p>There are two main types of underwater or ROV camera:</p><h3><strong>1. Main ROV Camera</strong></h3><p>The main ROV camera is the primary means of providing visual information to the ROV operator. These cameras are generally selected to be High-Definition and to have exceptional performance in low-light conditions. They are the primary camera used to pilot the vehicle and are forward-facing. Depending on the size of the vehicle, this camera may also be used for looking at objects of interest or there may be an additional camera for that purpose to deconflict from piloting operations.</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 768px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1649419090826-image.png" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner">An image from the forward-looking camera on the ROV SuBastian of the Schmidt Ocean Institute</span></span></span></p><p>Sometimes they are fixed&hellip;&nbsp;</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 768px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1649419133804-image-1.png" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner">An HD camera by ROV Innovations suitable for forward-facing main ROV camera use</span></span></span></p><p id="isPasted">&hellip;other times they are attached to mechanisms (<a href="https://blueprintlab.com/products/underwater-rotator/" target="_blank">rotators and pan/tilt units</a>) to enable them to move left/right and up/down, providing a greater field of view to the operator.</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 768px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1649419168373-image-2.png" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner"><em id="isPasted">The main ROV camera with tilt-function &ndash; the DTR-100Z from Bowtech</em>&nbsp;</span></span></span></p><h3 id="isPasted"><strong>2. Auxiliary ROV Camera</strong></h3><p>Auxiliary cameras are used to provide additional perspectives to that provided by the main, front ROV camera. Examples of where these are used are:</p><ul><li>A camera facing rearward to check the ROV tether condition or ensure the tether is not tangled during a complex manoeuvre.</li><li>A camera mounted on a corner of the ROV, or out on a boom and looking in towards the front of the ROV to provide a sense of distance when flying the ROV or using an ROV gripper or ROV manipulator.</li><li>A camera mounted on a manipulator arm to enable close vision of what the manipulator is being used for such as in <a href="https://blueprintlab.com/blog/top-uses-for-underwater-manipulators/" target="_blank">close visual inspections or complex interventions</a>.</li><li>A camera mounted on the side of the ROV to enable inspection of a structure while flying alongside it.</li></ul><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 768px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1649419205930-image-3.png" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner"><em id="isPasted">One of the auxiliary cameras on the ROV SuBastian provides an additional perspective of the ROV workspace.</em>&nbsp;</span></span></span></p><p>Auxiliary cameras often do not need to meet the same specifications as the main ROV camera and may additionally be limited by size constraints. Hence, they are often selected to be <a href="https://blueprintlab.com/products/underwater-rov-camera/" id="isPasted" target="_blank">pencil-style subsea cameras</a>. These cameras have the advantage of lower cost and smaller size.&nbsp;</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 768px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1649419238477-image-4.png" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner"><em id="isPasted">The Micro IP Camera from Blueprint Lab (Outer Diameter 2.4cm, length ~9cm)</em>&nbsp;</span></span></span></p><h2 id="isPasted"><style type="text/css" id="isPasted"></style><style type="text/css"></style><span data-sheets-formula="=PROPER(R[-1]C[0])" data-sheets-userformat='{"2":320,"9":2,"11":3}' data-sheets-value='{"1":2,"2":"Considerations In Selecting An Rov Camera"}'>Considerations In Selecting An ROV Camera</span> </h2><p>If you are selecting a camera for your underwater ROV or ROV manipulator, you should consider the following:</p><ul><li>Quality</li><li>Size (check out our <a href="https://blueprintlab.com/products/underwater-rov-camera/" target="_blank">miniature subsea camera</a> if this is a factor in your design)</li><li>Water Weight</li><li>Connector</li><li>Protocol</li><li>Performance in Low Light (sometimes additional illumination should be considered by adding <a href="https://blueprintlab.com/products/subsea-light/" target="_blank">ROV lights</a>, or selecting a camera with integrated LEDs)</li><li>Viewing Angle</li><li>Whether actuation (pan, tilt, complex motion) is required (if so, take a look at Blueprint Lab&rsquo;s<a href="https://blueprintlab.com/products/underwater-rotator/" target="_blank">&nbsp;rotator</a> and <a href="https://blueprintlab.com/products/manipulators/" target="_blank">manipulator</a> solutions)</li></ul>

An ROV camera is any visual imaging system that can be used on underwater ROVs to provide the operator with a perception of the operating environment. The depth rating for an ROV camera usually starts at 300m.

What is an ROV camera?

<p id="isPasted">Doing things underwater has always been challenging. Human divers brave the pressures of the deep subsea environment, dealing with low light, poor visibility, and little room for error. Since the 1970s, technology developments gave rise to ROVs with robotic arms (aka &lsquo;<a href="https://blueprintlab.com/products/manipulators/" target="_blank">underwater manipulator arms&rsquo;</a>) to start accomplishing tasks underwater.</p><p>Industries that use ROV manipulators include offshore energy, military, search and rescue, and marine science.</p><p>Whilst not as dexterous as humans, these ROV manipulator systems are stronger and can go deeper than humans can dive. This ushered in a new era for offshore oil companies who could now install and maintain deeper installations.</p><p>Originally, ROV manipulators were large and hydraulically powered. Today, whilst large hydraulic manipulators are still the workhorse of the ROV industry, electric systems have started to be released to the market. In particular, smaller electric ROV manipulators that are still highly dexterous have opened up new possibilities for the ROV community.</p><p>Here are the top 9 uses of underwater ROV manipulators based on working with our clients here at Blueprint Lab.</p><h2>1. <style type="text/css" id="isPasted"></style><style type="text/css"></style><span data-sheets-formula="=PROPER(R[-1]C[0])" data-sheets-userformat='{"2":320,"9":2,"11":3}' data-sheets-value='{"1":2,"2":"Non-Destructive Testing"}'>Non-Destructive Testing</span> (NDT)</h2><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondestructive_testing" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Non-Destructive Testing</a> (NDT), and sometimes called NDE or NDI for examination and inspection respectively, is the process of using non-invasive means to inspect a component or structure to detect cracking, corrosion, or other defects within the material.</p><p>Offshore oil rigs will sit in the water, braving the elements, salt corrosion, and marine growth for 20-30 years. To ensure that these structures and other water-based assets remain safe, there are regulations that govern their Inspection, Maintenance, and Repair (IMR). Disasters such as what happened to the<a href="https://www.offshore-technology.com/features/feature-the-worlds-deadliest-offshore-oil-rig-disasters-4149812/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">&nbsp;Alexander L Kiellande oil platform in 1980</a> or more recent <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gulf-of-mexico-fire-ocean-burst-pipeline" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">near misses in the Gulf of Mexico</a> have been caused by cracking and corrosion of subsea structures left unchecked.</p><p>Manipulators and human divers routinely carry out inspections of structures for cracking or corrosion using<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasonic_thickness_measurement" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">&nbsp;Ultrasonic Thickness</a> (UT),<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathodic_protection" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">&nbsp;Cathodic Protection</a> (CP), or<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternating_current_field_measurement" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">&nbsp;Alternating Current Field Measurement</a> instruments. ROV manipulators that are dexterous, more compact, and have advanced software control (including being able to precisely control the position and orientation of the instrument) have enabled small ROVs to <a href="https://blueprintlab.com/blog/degrees-of-freedom-vs-functions-of-a-robotic-arm/" target="_blank">carry out these tasks completely remotely</a>. Companies such as Fugro are<a href="https://www.fugro.com/about-fugro/our-expertise/remote-and-autonomous-solutions/remote-and-autonomous-vessels" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">&nbsp;pioneering remote operations</a> where an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) hosting an ROV can deploy and inspect infrastructure using dexterous manipulators.</p><p><img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjQ4NzE2Njk5OTc0LXBhc3RlZCBpbWFnZSAwLnBuZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6OTUwLCJmaXQiOiJjb3ZlciJ9fX0=" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><h2 id="isPasted">2. <style type="text/css" id="isPasted"></style><style type="text/css"></style><span data-sheets-formula="=PROPER(R[-1]C[0])" data-sheets-userformat='{"2":320,"9":2,"11":3}' data-sheets-value='{"1":2,"2":"Dexterous (Human-Like) Intervention"}'><strong>Dexterous (Human-Like) Intervention</strong></span><strong>&nbsp;</strong></h2><p>Achieving the same (or better) level of dexterity as a human is the holy grail of dexterous robotic manipulation. Huge progress has been made in recent years in terms of the size and joint dexterity of robotic manipulators above and below the water. One current limitation is the ability to achieve precise, small-scale dexterity. Land robots have demonstrated the use of robotic hands with fingers; successfully manufacturing similar technologies underwater is far more difficult and yet to be commercially solved.</p><p>Some dexterous tasks such as tying a knot, attaching a carabiner, or fastening a nut to a bolt have all been demonstrated using underwater manipulator technology. This has allowed industries to use robotic manipulators for net repair in aquaculture settings, and conduct complex military tasks.</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 768px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjQ4NzE2NzM2MTM1LUFscGhhLTUtQ2xpcHBpbmctQ2FyYWJpbmVyLTc2OHg1NzAuanBnIiwiZWRpdHMiOnsicmVzaXplIjp7IndpZHRoIjo5NTAsImZpdCI6ImNvdmVyIn19fQ==" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner"><em id="isPasted">Alpha 5 Manipulator attaching a carabiner underwater</em>&nbsp;</span></span></span></p><p><img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjQ4NzE2Nzg0NjE3LXBhc3RlZCBpbWFnZSAwICgxKS5wbmciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjk1MCwiZml0IjoiY292ZXIifX19" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><h2 id="isPasted">3. <style type="text/css" id="isPasted"></style><style type="text/css"></style><span data-sheets-formula="=PROPER(R[-1]C[0])" data-sheets-userformat='{"2":320,"9":2,"11":3}' data-sheets-value='{"1":2,"2":"Construction And Repair"}'>Construction And Repair</span></h2><p>With hydraulic and electric actuators able to exceed the capability of humans, underwater manipulator arms are used for moving large tools and instruments around to aid in the construction, maintenance, repair, and decommissioning of a whole range of subsea infrastructure. In the offshore energy industry, manipulators move large hooks attached to cables for deployment and recovery of subsea infrastructure and wield torque tools or welding torches.</p><p><img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjQ4NzE2ODE1NTExLU1pY3JvLUlQLUNhbWVyYS1CYW5uZXItMi03Njh4NDMyLmpwZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6OTUwLCJmaXQiOiJjb3ZlciJ9fX0=" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><h2 id="isPasted">4. <style type="text/css" id="isPasted"></style><style type="text/css"></style><span data-sheets-formula="=PROPER(R[-1]C[0])" data-sheets-userformat='{"2":320,"9":2,"11":3}' data-sheets-value='{"1":2,"2":"Close Visual Inspection"}'>Close Visual Inspection</span></h2><p>Like NDT, Close Visual Inspection (CVI) is concerned with looking at infrastructure with <a href="https://blueprintlab.com/products/underwater-rov-camera/" target="_blank">HD subsea cameras</a> to detect any issues that need repair or follow up. Manipulators with good reach (length) and dexterity enable CVI in hard-to-reach areas such as inside pipe inlets and behind propellers.</p><p>This ability for confined space access is a value-add offered by more modern, compact, electric manipulators like Blueprint Lab&rsquo;s Reach Alpha and Reach Bravo. Leveraging HD CVI allows for Underwater Inspection in Lieu of Dry-docking (UWILD). UWILD, as the name suggests, is the CVI/NDT of a ship&rsquo;s hull that avoids needing to take the vessel out of the water; a huge cost and efficiency saving.</p><p><img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjQ4NzE2ODQ1NDc1LUJyYXZvLVdyaXN0LUNhbWVyYS03Njh4NDI4LnBuZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6OTUwLCJmaXQiOiJjb3ZlciJ9fX0=" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"></p><h2 id="isPasted">5. <style type="text/css" id="isPasted"></style><style type="text/css"></style><span data-sheets-formula="=PROPER(R[-1]C[0])" data-sheets-userformat='{"2":320,"9":2,"11":3}' data-sheets-value='{"1":2,"2":"Cleaning/Anti-Fouling"}'>Cleaning/Anti-Fouling</span>&nbsp;</h2><p>Over time, subsea infrastructure can become coated in marine growth (barnacles etc) and other biofouling substances. To properly inspect the condition of the infrastructure (using NDT or CVI methods), surfaces must be cleaned of any marine growth. This is generally done by using high-power water pressure, a cavitation blaster, or a rotary brush.</p><p>In some scenarios, this will be done using a fixed system on the ROV. In other cases, the dexterity of a manipulator is required or beneficial to adequately reach all areas that need to be inspected. This is especially relevant where the geometry of the inspection area is more complex, such as at the weld nodes of a jack-up rig.</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 768px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjQ4NzE2ODc1MDg5LU9pbF9SaWctNzY4eDU3Ni5qcGVnIiwiZWRpdHMiOnsicmVzaXplIjp7IndpZHRoIjo5NTAsImZpdCI6ImNvdmVyIn19fQ==" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner"><em id="isPasted">Subsea steel joints</em>&nbsp;</span></span></span></p><h2 id="isPasted">6. <style type="text/css" id="isPasted"></style><style type="text/css"></style><span data-sheets-formula="=PROPER(R[-1]C[0])" data-sheets-userformat='{"2":320,"9":2,"11":3}' data-sheets-value='{"1":2,"2":"Sea Mine And Uied Intervention"}'>Sea Mine And UIED Intervention</span>&nbsp;</h2><p>Military clearance divers carry out dangerous tasks including deploying a shaped charge to disarm a mine or examining and disrupting a Waterborne Improvised Explosive Device (WBIED). These tasks are still done by humans because they require high fidelity perception and dexterous intervention capabilities not previously available through a remote solution. Recently, with the release of more dexterous, compact manipulator arms like the Reach Alpha, military organisations are investigating ways for ROVs to start to do some of these more dangerous tasks.</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 768px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjQ4NzE2OTEzMTM1LTEwMDU1MzczMDc1XzIxNmRkZTc3NWFfYy5qcGciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjk1MCwiZml0IjoiY292ZXIifX19" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner">Image Source: Flickr</span></span></span></p><h2 id="isPasted">7. <style type="text/css" id="isPasted"></style><style type="text/css"></style><span data-sheets-formula="=PROPER(R[-1]C[0])" data-sheets-userformat='{"2":320,"9":2,"11":3}' data-sheets-value='{"1":2,"2":"Special Recovery Operations (E.G. Downed Aircraft, Drowning Victims)"}'>Special Recovery Operations (e.g. Downed Aircraft, Drowning Victims)</span></h2><p>Special Recovery Operations include scenarios such as recovering a downed aircraft from the seafloor or drowning victims from a lakebed. These sensitive tasks have historically been conducted by highly skilled military or civilian diver teams. Recently ROVs have been able to assist and in some cases take-over, these high-risk tasks.</p><p>Dexterous manipulators can be used to tie knots or attach carabiners to recover objects or for the recovery of forensic items without disturbing the lake/sea bed.</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 768px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNjQ4NzE2OTYxMjYwLUhFQVJULXNpbXVsYXRpb24tNzY4eDQ4OS5qcGciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjk1MCwiZml0IjoiY292ZXIifX19" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner"><em id="isPasted">Alpha Grabber during a simulated recovery mission &ndash; See the full video story below!</em>&nbsp;</span></span></span></p><p><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/19V9YdC-ZOM?&wmode=opaque&rel=0&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" style="width: 768px; height: 430px;"></iframe></span></p><h2 id="isPasted">8. <style type="text/css" id="isPasted"></style><style type="text/css"></style><span data-sheets-formula="=PROPER(R[-1]C[0])" data-sheets-userformat='{"2":320,"9":2,"11":3}' data-sheets-value='{"1":2,"2":"Oceanography And Hydrography (Sampling And Measurement)"}'>Oceanography And Hydrography (Sampling And Measurement)</span></h2><p>Understanding the condition of our marine environment is critical for building a global picture of the Earth&rsquo;s ecosystem. Scientists regularly take samples from the sea bed for analysis and collect marine organisms for biological study. In some cases, sampling and organism collection requires precise positioning of a sampling device as well as the ability to retrieve a sample without stirring up sediment from the seafloor. Additionally, measuring devices (rulers and callipers) are often used to properly characterize an object of interest. In these cases, a dexterous manipulator allows for the ROV to sit on the seafloor and for confined areas to be reached (such as amongst a coral reef)</p><p><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width: 768px;"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1648717362455-EGM_5604_Credit_AIMS-EricMatson-2048x1367.jpeg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><span class="fr-inner">Image source: Scimex</span></span></span></p><h2 id="isPasted">9. <style type="text/css" id="isPasted"></style><style type="text/css"></style><span data-sheets-formula="=PROPER(R[-1]C[0])" data-sheets-userformat='{"2":320,"9":2,"11":3}' data-sheets-value='{"1":2,"2":"Autonomy And Custom Control"}'>Autonomy And Custom Control</span>&nbsp;</h2><p>Robotics and Autonomous Systems researchers around the world are pioneering the use of underwater robots in a variety of autonomous applications. Some examples of this are using manipulators to autonomously interact with a subsea control panel or using multiple robots to lift, carry, and place an object, thereby utilising the lift capacity of more than one underwater vehicle.</p><h2 id="isPasted"><style type="text/css" id="isPasted"></style><style type="text/css"></style><span data-sheets-formula="=PROPER(R[-1]C[0])" data-sheets-userformat='{"2":320,"9":2,"11":3}' data-sheets-value='{"1":2,"2":"Final Thoughts"}'>Final Thoughts</span> </h2><p>The uses of underwater ROV manipulators are varied and constantly expanding. As a company, Blueprint Lab is seeking not just to make incredible robotic arms, but to actually solve industry problems. We constantly discuss and explore the problems that our clients are trying to solve and have multiple projects in work regarding underwater manipulation, perception and control.</p>

The aim of this article is to provide a high-level answer to the question: “What do people use underwater robotic arms for?” If you’ve worked with Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) before, this article probably isn’t for you. For everyone else, let’s go.