[Editors] MIT’s new underwater robot can hover in place

[Teresa Herbert]

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MIT’s new underwater robot can hover in place
-- Odyssey IV could be a boon for oil explorers, archaeologists and more
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For Immediate Release
THURSDAY, SEP. 25, 2008

Contact: Teresa Herbert, MIT News Office
E: therbert at mit.edu, T: 617-258-5403

Video Available


CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — MIT researchers have designed a new robotic  
underwater vehicle that can hover in place like a helicopter — an  
invaluable tool for deepwater oil explorers, marine archaeologists,  
oceanographers and others.

The new craft, called Odyssey IV, is the latest in a series of small,  
inexpensive artificially intelligent submarines developed over the  
last two decades by the MIT Sea Grant College Program’s Autonomous  
Underwater Vehicles Laboratory. The Odyssey series revolutionized  
underwater research in the 1990s by introducing the thrifty and highly  
capable underwater robots. But the previous Odyssey vehicles still had  
one significant limitation: Like sharks, they could only operate while  
continuously moving forward.

No more. The new Odyssey IV, which has just completed sea trials off  
Woods Hole, Mass., can move through the deep ocean, up to 6,000 meters  
down, stopping anywhere in the water column and constantly correcting  
for currents and obstacles. Navigating to its preprogrammed  
destination, it can hover in place, making detailed inspections of the  
footings of an offshore oil platform, or photographing the flora and  
fauna around an undersea vent.

“Our old subs needed to swim, to go forward, in order to maintain  
maneuvering capability,” says Chryssostomos Chryssostomidis, director  
of the MIT Sea Grant Program. “People wanted to be able to work in the  
ocean and stop and hover to do a specific task. In the past, you could  
only fly over a scene, take a picture, then fly over again and take  
another picture. Now, I can stop over a scene that’s of interest, and  
stay and make measurements. We’ll be able to observe underwater scenes  
in much more detail.”

This summer, this latest-generation craft has been demonstrating its  
new abilities on its first scientific mission, a study of the George’s  
Bank area of the Gulf of Maine, which is hugely important to the  
region’s commercial fisheries. Odyssey is being deployed in a series  
of dives to map and observe an invasive species of sea squirt called  
Didemnum that has been infesting New England waters. MIT Sea Grant’s  
Judy Pederson has been tracking the Didemnum invasion for several  
years, hoping to prevent it from smothering important native species;  
Odyssey IV will be her eyes on the seafloor.

And the new craft’s unique capabilities go beyond just looking at  
objects. “Like a giant helicopter, this can pick up cargo underwater,”  
Chryssostomidis says. “Now, we can visit an oil well, pick up a sample  
and bring it back to shore.” With the addition of a mechanical arm,  
the vessel will be able to do manipulations such as twisting a valve  
open or closed.

Not only can the craft hover, it can move quickly, up to two meters  
per second going straight ahead. Both its speed and its ability to  
stop in place are achieved through the combined action of fins and  
thrusters on each side, and at the bow and stern of the two-meter-long  
craft.

The new vehicle may be able to stop in place, but Chryssostomidis and  
his colleague Franz Hover, an assistant professor in the Department of  
Mechanical Engineering, and their team, research engineers Jim Morash,  
Victor Polidoro, Justin Eskesen and graduate student Dylan Owens,  
certainly are not. With the initial sea trials of Odyssey IV just  
completed, they are focused squarely on moving ahead to their goals.  
They need to develop vastly improved power-storage and communications  
capabilities, to enable these vehicles to stay underwater longer,  
cover more terrain, and send back more data to scientists on shore.  
Ultimately, Chryssostomidis says, he hopes his team will produce an  
AUV that can spend a full year underwater, collecting data and  
transmitting it to its home base, without any need to surface at all.

“Once we prove the hovering capability foolproof, as we think it is  
now, the next challenge for me to worry about is the issue of  
recharging, so that I can be free of the surface vessel,” he says. He  
also hopes to develop better manipulator arms that will be able to  
interact more flexibly with the undersea environment, to pick up  
objects or carry out repairs.

But for now, Chryssostomidis is reveling in the fact that Odyssey IV,  
after years of development, has passed its initial tests in the ocean  
with flying colors. No matter how good the design, that’s not  
something you can take for granted, he explains. “The sea is very  
unforgiving. If there’s anything that can go wrong, the sea will find  
it.”

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