The robot will deploy instruments to gather information in unprecedented detail about how marine life interacts with underwater equipment used to harvest wave and tidal energy. Researchers still don’t fully understand how animals and fish will be affected by ocean energy equipment, and this instrument seeks to identify risks that could come into play in a long-term marine renewable energy project.

“This is the first attempt at a ‘plug-and-socket’ instrumentation package in the marine energy field. If successful, it will change the way that industry views the viability of environmental research and development,” said , a 天美影视传媒 assistant professor of mechanical engineering and one of the project’s leaders.

The UW research team tested the Millennium Falcon and the instruments it transports, called the , underwater for the first time in January in a deep tank on campus. Researchers will continue testing in Puget Sound under more challenging conditions starting this month. They hope this tool will be useful for pilot tidal- and wave-energy projects and eventually in large-scale, commercial renewable-energy projects.

“We’ve really become leaders in this space, leveraging UW expertise with cabled instrumentation packages like those developed for the . What’s novel here is the serviceability of the system and our ability to rapidly deploy and recover the instruments at low cost,” said , an ocean engineer at the UW .

The instrument package can track and measure a number of sights and sounds underwater. It has a stereo camera to collect photos and video, a sonar system, hydrophones to hear marine mammal activity, sensors to gauge water quality and speed, a click detector to listen for whales, dolphins and porpoises, and even a device to detect fish tags. A fiber optic cable connection back to shore allows for real-time monitoring and control, and the device will be powered by a copper wire.

The breadth of sensors and various conditions this instrument can measure is unprecedented, researchers say. The tool also is unique for its ability to attach to most types of underwater infrastructure, ranging from tidal turbines to offshore oil and gas rigs. This allows researchers to easily deploy the instrument far offshore and recover it quickly at a relatively low cost compared with other approaches.

“It could be a first step toward a standardized ‘science port’ for marine energy projects,” Polagye said.

This speedy deployment and recovery — sometimes in rough seas — is possible because the instrument fits inside a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, that can maneuver underwater and drop off the instrumentation package at a docking station integrated onto a turbine or other existing subsea infrastructure.

The vehicle is about the size of a golf cart, and the research team outfitted the off-the-shelf underwater surveying machine with five extra thrusters on an external frame to give it more power to move against strong currents. Actuators on the vehicle latch the monitoring instruments onto a subsea docking station, and then the Millennium Falcon can disengage, leaving the instruments in place, and travel back to the water’s surface.

The shape of the monitoring package resembles an from the original “Star Wars” trilogy. (The researchers are mum on whether their Millennium Falcon can make the in less than 12 parsecs.)

This project is a collaboration between researchers in mechanical engineering and the Applied Physics Laboratory, within the larger , which is a multi-institution organization that develops marine renewable energy technologies through research, education and outreach. The center and the Applied Physics Laboratory recently from the U.S. Navy to develop marine renewable energy for use at its facilities worldwide.

Development of this environmental monitoring instrument was prompted by a long-running tidal energy pilot project with the Snohomish County Public Utility District in Admiralty Inlet that recently was . Going forward, researchers expect to use the same device to monitor marine-energy projects cropping up around the world and help to reduce the cost of future developments.

“Snohomish PUD was really at the forefront of projects grappling with this problem of monitoring a tidal turbine in deep, fast moving water. But as other projects in the U.S., Europe and Canada have faced similar monitoring scenarios, the instrumentation package is shaping up as a strong candidate to meet their needs,” Polagye said.

Other lead researchers are UW mechanical engineering graduate students and .

The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Naval Facilities Engineering Command, the Snohomish County Public Utility District and the UW.

###

For more information, contact Polagye at bpolagye@uw.edu or 206-543-7544 and Stewart at andy@apl.washington.edu or 206-221-8015.

The U.S. Navy has committed to get half of its energy from renewable sources by the year 2020. One element of that strategy will be looking to extract energy from tides, currents and waves.

The 天美影视传媒 is helping to reach that goal with an $8 million, four-year contract from the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, or NAVFAC, to develop marine renewable energy for use at the Navy’s facilities worldwide.

The goal is to generate energy from the surrounding water at coastal bases, islands or overseas facilities in order to lower costs and increase reliability of the power supply. Forming a partnership with NAVFAC will allow the UW to develop tools for the Navy to predict and tap energy at its various marine locations.

“We are advancing existing technologies and concepts so they will perform well at naval facilities and help reach their energy targets,” said lead investigator , an engineer at the UW’s . He will present information about the project Oct. 25 in Seattle at the ‘s annual meeting.

The team has a three-pronged strategy to develop marine energy at naval facilities, which differ from the prime spots now under investigation for commercial marine energy extraction.

During the past three months UW mechanical engineering faculty and graduate students have made 3-D printed prototypes of tidal turbines that they will test in the UW’s and with computer modeling studies.

Next they will take the most promising designs and build larger-scale models, about 3 feet across, to test in moving water in 2016. One aim of the project is to develop fast, low-cost ways to evaluate the energy potential at prospective sites.

“We’ve learned that you can’t rely on modeling,” Stewart said. “You need in-water verification of marine energy resources.”

This project is not focused on one specific design but instead will look at different technologies.

“The idea is to conduct the research that’s needed to fill the gap between where the technology is now and where it needs to be for the Navy to take maximum advantage of the currents, tides and waves, as well as wind,” Stewart said.

The third aspect of the project is developing low-cost monitoring technology to make environmental monitoring at naval facilities more straightforward.

The team will soon begin to modify the Applied Physics Laboratory’s research vessel to test small-scale marine energy prototypes. The boat, a catamaran barge, was initially built for research on underwater sound. It is well suited for marine energy work because it is stable and allows researchers to lower equipment off the front of the boat, into water undisturbed by the boat’s wake.

“It’s a pretty big opportunity for us to work on the optimization problems associated with getting these to work in lower-energy environments,” said collaborator , a UW assistant professor of mechanical engineering. He is leading the development of the 3-D prototypes and the environmental monitoring technology.

, an oceanographer at the Applied Physics Laboratory and associate professor in civil and environmental engineering, is developing wave power devices and low-cost technology to measure the amount of potential wave and tidal energy at various sites.

“Really what we’re trying to do is develop a new sector of the maritime industry,” Stewart said.

###

For more information, contact Stewart at 206-221-8015 or andy@apl.washington.edu, Polagye at 206-543-7544 or bpolagye@uw.edu and Thomson at 206-616-0858 or jthomson@apl.washington.edu.

Researchers will present the project in Seattle at the ‘s annual meeting. Reporters can attend the poster session Saturday, Oct. 25 from 4 to 7 p.m. in the foyer.

Using technology developed by 鈥檚 lab in the Department of Electrical Engineering, a team of UW scientists and engineers working at the Applied Physics Laboratory is creating a control system for underwater remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs.

These instruments can perform a variety of undersea tasks too dangerous — or even impossible — for humans, including oil and gas exploration, biohazard clean-up and mining, and environmentally sensitive scientific research.

In June, the UW and BluHaptics team will travel to Washington, D.C. to showcase this technology at the SmartAmerica Challenge, as part of the Smart Emergency Response Systems team. The will be a three-day event, including a White House presentation, a technology exposition and a technical-level meeting.

The UW research team is working with a 鈥渟ubmersible manipulator test bed鈥� at the APL, which is made up of specialized, submersible equipment similar to what鈥檚 used in the oil and gas industry for offshore operations. This equipment is submerged in a large water tank for a realistic test environment.

鈥淓ssentially, we鈥檙e combining the spatial awareness of a computer system with the perceptive capability of a human operator,鈥� said聽, a senior engineer in the Department of Ocean Engineering and part of the BluHaptics team. 鈥淭o do this, we use what鈥檚 called a haptic device.鈥�

Haptics describes feedback technology that takes advantage of the sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations or motions to the user. The haptic device is used both to control the robot and to provide force feedback to the user.聽 This feedback guides the human operator to the desired location, pushing back on the hand to avoid collisions or other mistakes.

The haptic input device is similar to using a mouse with a computer, Stewart said, 鈥渂ut it鈥檚 giving three-dimensional input, so you鈥檙e actually defining a point in space where you want the robotic arm to go.鈥�

鈥淗aptics does for the sense of touch what computer graphics do for vision,鈥� said Chizeck, who co-directs the .

The technology creates a virtual representation based on a combination of sonar, video and laser inputs — sensory feedback that enhances the human-robotic interface and speeds up operations. This translates into tackling the task at hand safely and more efficiently, while greatly reducing the risk of damage to the environment.

The BluHaptics robotic control system is based on key algorithms developed by Fredrik Ryden in electrical engineering as part of his doctoral work. This work was originally directed to robotic surgery, which allows surgeons to operate remotely via a computer connected to a robot — a surgical alternative for certain medical procedures that can mean enhanced precision and less trauma for the patient, and decreased fatigue for the surgeon. BluHaptics is now applying and modifying these same algorithms to underwater robotics.

Read the about BluHaptics on the Center for Commercialization’s website.