Sun-driven robot might conduct surveys

CAPE CANAVERAL - Sun-driven robots might help thwart toxic algae and terrorists or discover dead fish.

They could torpedo solo though the Indian River Lagoon, making continuous, real-time scans of water chemistry, organisms, topography and signs of ecological ills.

They could even monitor for enemy threats at Port Canaveral.

Scientists plan a field test here of the new solar-powered robot — or autonomous underwater vehicle — in March, then later in St. Petersburg and in Lake Okeechobee.

The researchers hope those demonstrations in front of state and federal wildlife and environmental agencies might prompt funding for a program that routinely deploys one or more of the vehicles in Florida’s coastal waters.

“It’s time to take it out of the Navy’s backyard and see what it can do down here,” said Grant Gilmore, a fishery ecologist from Vero Beach who recently helped brief officials about the vehicle.

The vessel, developed with help from Navy and Russian scientists, could survey large ecosystems and carry a big enough payload to test sounds, water quality and underwater features with side-scan sonar.

The Navy is looking for uses of the technology it helped scientists at the University of New Hampshire develop. The engineers who built it say the vehicle is a cheaper way to see what the water, fish and terrorists are up to and could unveil seldom-seen underwater worlds and their trends.

Longer runs

Dr. Arthur Sanderson, professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,
checks on the autonomous underwater vehicle.

The big advantage of the solar-powered vehicle is that it can run much longer on its own than other autonomous vehicles, no tether required.

“I’m real interested to see how this works out,” said Andrew Shepard, associate director of the National Undersea Research Center in Wilmington, N.C., who studies deep-sea reefs off Cape Canaveral.

Researchers can program the vehicle to work 10-hour shifts, recharge itself for 10 hours, then return days later to whatever GPS coordinates they program. The robot can communicate with stationary underwater acoustic monitors and with scientists, via satellite.

But there are drawbacks to sun power.

“The difficulty with any vehicle like that that’s very low-powered is the currents,” Shepard said. The robot might struggle to keep its bearings in the Gulf Stream.

“You’d have a hard time running a straight transect,” he said. “It would be great running up and down the lagoon, if a boat doesn’t run into it.”

Dodging boats

Richard Blidberg, the engineer at the University of New Hampshire who helped invent the vehicle, said it could be programmed to ride with the Gulf Stream, scanning along the way and eventually might be able to dodge boats.

“That’s the Achilles’ heel,” Blidberg said. “You’ve got to figure out how to let it know when boats are there.”

The solar vehicle costs about $100,000. But each sensor desired would add to that cost.

Blidberg said the Navy spent about $2 million in development during the past five years. So far, it is used only as a prototype, he said, not in the official fleet of underwater autonomous vehicles.

The researcher said the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission or Department of Environmental Protection would be likely candidates for running a solar vehicle program.

Five have been built so far. Two batteries, weighing a combined 27 pounds, power the vehicle for 10 hours, depending on how fast it goes. Top speed is about 3.5 mph.

Mating calls

One priority might be better maps of the most important grouper and snapper nesting spots along the Oculina Bank, deep-sea coral that grows only along the Southeastern United States.

With underwater microphones attached, the robot could record where grouper and snapper make mating calls, to protect those areas during spawning season.

“These features are extremely important to our fisheries,” Gilmore said of the 200-foot tall Oculina coral formations he found during a recent research expedition.

Biologists could forecast harmful “red tide” or fish kills in the lagoon and St. Johns River, then pinpoint the pollution sources that cause them. Sensors would scan continuously for chlorophyll bacteria, to anticipate the harmful algae blooms.

The probes could help create better underwater maps of Port Canaveral and other major ports and monitor for explosive devices such as mines. Underwater robots — though not solar-powered — were used during the Iraq war.

Gilmore envisions the probe drifting the Gulf Stream from Miami to the Carolinas, tracking fish migrations, habitat and spawning.

“If it works really well, then I would imagine there would be a number of agencies interested in it,” he said.

The strong sunrays make the solar vehicle a good fit in Florida, Blidberg told port and wildlife officials at the Nov. 29 briefing at the port.

“There are times where you can’t use these, but places like here and Hawaii where you can use them year-round,” he said.