Changing The Game in Underwater Exploration

The Laboratory for Autonomous Marine Sensing Systems or LAMSS at MIT is working on some of the most cutting edge technology in the industry. It is a collaboration between Scripps, the University of California in San Diego and MIT. Their research focuses on “the development of distributed ocean sensing concepts based on fully integrated Sensing, Modeling and Control, taking advantage of the environment and situational adaptation and collaboration with clusters of sensing nodes, without the direct need for operator control”. Sounds like a mouth full, but the technology they have been working on and continue to develop is astounding.

Developing technology like SWAMSI or Shallow Water Autonomous Mine Search Initiative, uses sensing, modeling and control to detect buried objects on the seafloor. This is achieved through a collaboration of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV’s), acoustic sources and receiving arrays.

There is also OOI or the Ocean Observatories Initiative whose purpose is to conduct transformational ocean science using an integrated ocean observatory. A network created using multiple AUV systems and docking stations that can be controlled by scientists from their universities and laboratories. Currently work is being conducted that would allow multiple unmanned underwater systems to interact using artificial intelligence.

DSOP or Deep Sea Operations is another initiative with the focus to develop a more cost effective way to carry out acoustic surveillance in deep ocean environments. Operations provide a network of AUV’s with a suite of sensors operating close to the seafloor optimizing the acoustics of the deep underwater environment.

ERD or Enhanced Riverine Drifter is developing a platform that addresses the current shortcomings in current drifters used to collect environmental data in riverine environments including poor spatial resolution and snagging drifters that can get caught in debris that naturally follows the same streamline. Again control and collaboration play a role in the technological advances being made. Allowing systems to collaborate and working autonomously to collect data in an array of marine and fresh water environments will undoubtedly become a game changer in underwater exploration, and MIT is one of the players leading the way.