A swarm of Mini-Autonomous Underwater Explorers, developed by the Jaffe Laboratory for Underwater Imaging at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. CEOAS’s Jessica Garwood is working with Jules Jaffe on an advanced version of this bot, called the VOLT (Vehicle for Observing Lagrangian/Larval Transport). Image: Jules Jaffe
Spring/Summer 2024
High Tech Flock
Robot swarms will swim under ice shelves to study melting
Here at Oregon State, we are good at deploying fleets of robots. Just look at the pack of adorable, white, just-bigger-than-a-breadbox cuties that roll around the Corvallis campus delivering food.
Researchers in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences now have plans to deploy a swarm of robots to collect and deliver data, rather than dinner. The $1.5 million project, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, is designed to help advance underwater exploration in confined and hard-to-reach environments such as cavities under ice shelves.
“Working in the water under ice is particularly challenging because communications are limited and there is no surface access to recover equipment,” says CEOAS oceanographer Jessica Garwood, the project’s principal investigator. “We need robots that can travel into these areas and also travel back out.”
The research team’s goal is to develop a system with a large “mothership” robot that will carry and deploy a swarm of smaller passenger robots. These smaller bots would operate autonomously and be programmed with decision-making ability based on conditions.
“Once the robots are deployed, they are on their own out there. They won’t be able to surface to send information, they will only be able to communicate with each other,” says Garwood. “So the robots might be programmed to identify a fresh water signal coming from a melting glacier and follow that signal, for example.”
During the three-year project, the researchers plan to conduct a series of tests in water, including a frozen lake in Oregon.
Supporting solutions science
Donors establish center for development of ocean technology
Oregon State alums Michael and Judith Gaulke love the ocean. They have had the opportunity to swim, sail and dive all over the world, and as the oceans have changed, the Gaulkes have taken notice and have wanted to help.
Their exciting solution? The Gaulkes have committed a $20 million gift to the Oregon State University Foundation to create a new center to lead and support innovative research and development of technology that helps society better understand, protect and utilize the ocean and its environment. The Gaulke Center for Marine Innovation and Technology will emphasize interdisciplinary research such as collaboration between oceanography and artificial intelligence, two areas of study fully within OSU’s wheelhouse. The gift will establish the Michael and Judith Gaulke Chair in Ocean Innovation, who will serve as executive director of the center and hold a joint faculty appointment in the OSU colleges of Engineering and Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences.
The gift also includes start-up funding for the new center, support for faculty and graduate students and funding for early-stage research or projects that have significant potential impact but may be considered too risky to receive other types of funding. An endowment will provide long-term support.
“From the massive worldwide problem of junk in the ocean to the opportunity of harnessing sustainable energy, there are so many challenges to address,” Mike Gaulke says. “We believe OSU is the ideal place to invest in creating solutions, and we hope others will join us.”
“The Gaulke Center is a perfect example of what’s possible when we combine our donors’ deepest passions with the university’s greatest strengths,” says Shawn L. Scoville, president and CEO of the OSU Foundation. “The Gaulkes are exemplary philanthropists, and we are grateful for their profound commitment to caring for the world’s oceans as well as their deep love for Oregon State University.”
Creating a time machine
CEOAS is among the first to receive NVIDIA’s newest technology
Grace Hopper was a pioneering computer scientist, mathematician and U.S. Navy Rear Admiral whose brilliant work on programming languages enabled development of COBOL, a language still in use today. Hopper has a Navy ship named after her, as well as an annual conference focused on women in computing.
Her latest namesake is a breakthrough computer chip, one that promises to propel supercomputing and artificial intelligence to new heights for fields from genomics to computer chip design to climate modeling. The Grace Hopper Superchip combines a CPU (central processing unit) and GPU (graphics processing unit) on one board, allowing for for incredibly fast processing of massive datasets. At its unveiling, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said that the chip is “the world’s first accelerated computing processor that also has a giant memory.”
Oregon State University was one of the first institutions in the world to receive the new chip – two of them, in fact, one for CEOAS and one for the College of Engineering. Dean Tuba Özkan-Haller was thrilled to be present for the big unboxing of CEOAS’s chip in December of 2023. Before the chip was installed in a CEOAS server, Özkan-Haller signed the server cover, noting that the chip will enable CEOAS researchers to produce and run increasingly complex models, creating a time machine that allows analysis of the past and present as well as forecasting of our environmental future.
CEOAS Director of Research and Academic Computing Services Chris Sullivan notes, “We are very excited to leverage this new technology to help model climate change and other areas of our changing world.”
Grace Hopper herself would approve.
Practice makes perfect
Training early-career scientists to lead polar research
Conducting polar science from a ship is never easy – the harsh environment and remote locations present a range of unique challenges, all exacerbated by being on a ship. For early-career scientists, the complex logistics of a polar research cruise can be daunting. Still, it’s critical for researchers to reach the poles in person, to collect critical ecosystem and climate data.
In the interest of breaking down barriers to planning ship-based polar expeditions, CEOAS scientists Laurie Juranek and Emily Eidam are leading an NSF-funded program, through the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System, or UNOLS, to teach early-career scientists to lead polar research cruises.
“Polar research often requires specialized research vessels and unique planning considerations,” says Juranek. “We want to share knowledge and experience regarding the use of these platforms, in order to allow a wider range of scientists to engage in this critical research.”
Now in its second year, the program includes 20 researchers from institutions across the U.S. The group will have a number of virtual training sessions via Zoom, and then, what better way to teach researchers about ship logistics and cruise leadership than by taking them on a ship? The program will include a 10-15 day transit of the Northwest Passage aboard the USCGC Healy, a ship often used for oceanographic research.
“We will immerse our participants in planning and executing daily science operations with some commonly-used types of oceanographic instruments aboard the ship,” Juranek says.
“Training like this will lead to more and better polar science, with a wider range of researchers able to ask and answer critical questions.”
