Engineering

Engineering plays a key role in scientific experiments in the ocean. Instruments with sensors are needed to measure chemical, physical, and biological parameters. Robots enable sample collection, instrument placement, and the ability to interact with the environment through telemanipulation. Autonomous vehicles provide a variety of capabilities including mapping, mobile sensing, and interaction with the environment.

The new technologies of cabled ocean observatories will provide high power and bandwidth to these instruments and robots for long deployments and real-time data collection. Engineering research is also needed in signal processing and communications systems, imaging, control systems, power systems, materials, and biomaterials to minimize biofouling of instruments.

Sensor systems for aquatic environments

Sensing systems as part of an undersea network (see e.g. [1]) have been implemented using passive and active sonars for detection and sophisticated electronics for post-processing. Commercial systems are available for marine and other applications.

A 2004 review in the Marine Technology Society Journal [2] assesses the current status of different types of chemical and biological sensors for time-series observations and interactive experiments in ocean observatories.

Sensors needed to address compelling earth-ocean-atmosphere science questions include: oxygen, nitrate, ammonium, urea, silica, phosphate, pH, total inorganic carbon, pCO2, alkalinity, dissolved and particulate organic carbon and nitrogen, methane, hydrogen sulfide, dissolved halogens, iron species, magnesium, hydrogen, and microbial activity. Acoustic and optical sensors are needed to measure a variety of physical, chemical, and biological phenomena.

The authors of the article in the Marine Technology Society Journal conclude that few chemical or biological sensors are ready for long-term (~1 year) deployment in the ocean. Sensor accuracy and duration of deployment are limited by sensor response times, dynamic range, sensitivity and detection levels, stability, internal calibrations, reagent storage, size, power requirements, and biofouling.

1. The Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System
2. K.L. Daly, R.H. Byrne, A.G. Dickson, S.M. Gallager, M.J. Perry, and M.K. Tivey, “Chemical and Biological Sensors for Time-Series Research: Current Status and New Directions,” Marine Technology Society Journal, 38(2):121-143, 2004.

Robotics and Underwater Autonomous Vehicles

Underwater robots and autonomous vehicles have been developed by a number of groups including Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, and International Submarine Equipment in Canada.

See the Underwater Vehicles page for more information on these systems. Opportunities exist to develop new robotic seafloor laboratories and mobile robotic vehicles equipped with multiple sensors.