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I'm very happy to introduce Leila first
to you, who is giving the talk
on marriage in robotics.
She's active at city Munich,
for example. You know her probably from
the last Congress.
But now she went
to the coast to research
maritime robotics.
And hopefully at the next camp
where we have some awesome lakes, we
see more interesting technology
also in the sea and in the lakes.
And I'm very much looking forward to
that. Thank you, Leila, for your
applause.
Hello.
So over the last two, three years, I've
been getting more and more interested in
the area of maritime robotics
and someone who's been visiting Congress
for quite a while as well.
At some point I sat down, was wondering
how did I miss all these amazing talks
about robots in water that must
have been here at some point.
So I had to look at the things
that we talk about here and we talk about
a lot of interesting robots that go
across the land, fly through the air.
But there really were no talks
about robots in the sea.
So here I am
at a talk about gated communities
and indeed the oceans are gated
communities.
A lot of them talk about the ocean floor
factory, thinking about
getting oil and gas from the sea military
robot operations
or getting more resources from the sea.
There are also biologists and geologists
doing research, but the
big investment is coming from
these sites.
So here I am now, techology to the
oceans, whilst we still have
much more things on this factory
floor than just machines,
so there are currently still fairly
interesting species being discovered at
the ocean floor from Dragon Light
to cuddly.
And we know more about space
than we know about our oceans.
We can say we have mapped all of our
oceans, but the resolution at which it's
mapped is kind of ridiculous.
There are some fairly big dragons that
can still hide in this resolution.
And besides finding those dragons,
the ocean floor, well,
there are a lot of interesting challenges
and other things to do.
And in the sea,
I tried to find a picture that is really
impressive, showing a broken maritime
robot. But there's one big problem.
If a maritime robot breaks, it
tends to not come back to you.
So you can't really take any impressive
pictures. This one was attached to ropes.
So when it imploded at 50 meter depth
because we had slightly under
or overestimated the wall thickness
of this ball, we got
back or electronics washed in saltwater
and all that was not really usable
anymore. But at least I could take an
impressive picture.
And I found that car window motors
are really, really good motors because
they still work even after being so
soaked in saltwater.
Then there's a lot of interesting data to
find.
There's open Seamap, which is trying to
map ocean depth, for example,
and then all boats have to carry A.I.S
beacons, which give information about
them, which can be turned into maps of
what boats are moving where at the
moment.
So anyone who likes Flight Tracker, you
can also check out this to watch boats
moving and oil boats standing
around in the sea waiting for prices to
change.
And then you can filter these things.
So, for example, you can find out where
our boats that are only fishing boats and
you can see what our fishing fleet is
currently doing.
Then there are a lot of shipwrecks on
the ocean floor.
So, of course, within the laws,
you can go and check out what might be
hidden in your nearest lake.
And they might also be quite
Orobets will be quite useful for
monitoring what is put into our oceans
to do regular monitoring and find
out what chemicals are there without
risking human injury.
So to first get started into this whole
area, I tried to categorize the robots
that I'd come across over the last years
into a family of robots.
The simplest thing you can do is you can
put some sensors on a robot, put it into
the sea, talk to it via satellite or
via local network, and then just
get information about wherever that
sensor buoys drifting or where
it's anchored.
You can add more sensors and then at
some point you want it to move.
So you turn towards the traveler, which
is something that uses
its environment effectively to move
because battery charge is something
very valuable. So you generate some
energy from the sun to get sensors
working and then you try to use your
environment to start moving.
So, for example, sailors will like this
or this one here uses wave energy.
It will not be comfortable to sit on
because it actually exaggerates wave
movement to propel itself.
And this one here again uses wave energy
to get moving. And it's already starting
to move a bit under the water.
And then you want to get some more data
from under there, right.
So you go into the underwater airplane
section. So you all know airplanes,
right? They have big wings and they
use this to fly upwards.
Now, the underwater airplanes have small
wings and those small wings are
in water. So they have to be kind of in
different sizes and all.
But still, this is what helps control the
vehicle. And like an airplane of
an airplane stops in midair.
You have a problem.
If you're underwater, vehicle has to
stop. If it's an airplane design, you
also have a slight problem because
as long as it's floating or as its
basic status floating, it'll start
crashing towards the sea surface.
So these guys are pretty useful.
They use very low energy.
But you have this condition
that you can't stop in the middle of
the sea.
So if you go to the ocean floor
for a longer period, you'll use one of
those which uses a propeller to propel
itself and
you get to the limit that you can't get
any closer because of exactly this
problem, that you don't know what's ahead
of you and you don't have
much time to react because you can't
stop.
So that's when you get to the diving box.
The diving box has a lot of sensors.
It has a lot of actuators.
So it can move in any direction, but it's
not very energy effective.
So you only have a few hours were
previously you could have a vehicle
moving for days or months.
And these come in various sizes.
And some sometimes they have a.
Why are attached to them a tether,
and then you can use them for a bit
longer because you can also send
electricity over them or you can have
a human at the top controlling the
vehicle.
And then last but not least, we've got
the wild cards, which are robots
that are often inspired by animals
or designed for very specific purposes.
So we've got three animals that you can
clearly recognize here, I think.
And then the top one here is
a quite interesting one that was
specifically designed to collect
oil spills.
So the sailing boat was designed
against any instinct for sailing boat,
but to drag along kind
of nets behind it.
So onto some basic principles
that you need to think about besides
building a robot, if
you want to put something in the sea, you
have to think about what its
weight is relative to the water.
If its weight is lighter than the amount
of water that would fill its space,
it'll always come back to the surface,
which is a quite useful thing.
If it's called buoyancy
negative, it'll go down,
which is quite good if you want to get a
vehicle to high depth, because then you
don't have to use energy to get it down
there. But you have to keep in mind
whatever happens, it needs to come back
up again. So you need to be able to get
rid of some weight and then you have the
magic point in the middle were
the force of the weight and the force
of the upwards
force to force are the same.
And then you get basically a lovely
vehicle that is floaty and very fun to
control.
But overall, you always want to be around
that zero point because otherwise you
need to use a lot of energy.
So my general rule, when designing or
looking at a vehicle to guess its weight
is I take the vehicle and replace
every bit of the vehicle with a bottle of
water.
And then I know how many bottles of water
I have to carry or how much this vehicle
weighs. For me,
the next problem is that you have
pressure there, which is higher.
With every 10 meters of water, you get
one atmosphere more.
So that's what we fell over when we tried
to get our vehicle to more than 50 meter
depth.
The most important factor in
this is how big the vehicle is and that
directly influences how thick the
walls of it have to be.
So if you want to go to really high
depth, you need to have specifically
designed very thick metal
or glass containers
to give you kind of a scale.
The Myth Busters did a very entertaining
episode where they tested ping pong
balls, which make 25 meter depth.
Biologists like to put
Styrofoam cups into their test
containers, and those usually
come back from about a thousand thousand
five hundred meters, very nice and tiny.
Now our oceans are four kilometers deep
on average, and the maximum depth
is 11 kilometers depth.
Yes, so in the worst case,
our vehicle imploded, implodes, and
everything that was er before is replaced
with water and you suddenly have a very
heavy vehicle attached
to a tether or not even attached to a
tether and then definitely not coming
back.
And this happens occasionally.
So sadly, this vehicle that was quite
capable of diving about 10000
meters deep did not come back.
And the guess is that
an implosion happened somewhere.
So now we've taken care
of the basic problems of having something
that needs to move on or underwater.
How do these things differ from the air
and land vehicles that we know in
communication orientation?
The sensor buoys and travelers are quite
similar. You've all or some
of you might remember the talk about
iridium and speed, which is a quite
useful service when you run out of all
other various wireless communication
methods. Now underwater,
you have one big problem.
Wireless communication doesn't penetrate
seawater very far as
it goes, a few centimeters for it.
No chance of using it for your
vehicle.
Then if you look over all the
electromagnetic spectrum, you see that
the sea is blue.
So let's look at this wavelength.
We could use a laser, for example, to do
some 3D scanning.
But there's one big issue with the sea.
The seawater isn't clear like the sky.
There are even some animals that have a
basic defense against being scanned by
lasers. So just imagine what some crazy
waves will do or
some mud in the water.
So, hello, acoustic waves.
This is how communication and
orientation and water works.
This is my hand.
I'm holding it into the water.
You can see the water surface and you can
see where the sonar beam detects
my hand.
Now, there is one big problem with this
speed and water of sound
is not the same speed and light
speed of light. So what we're used to get
instant pictures.
If we want to look 700 meters
far in water, we have to wait one second
for the sound to travel 700 meters and
then 700 meters back to us.
And similarly, if we have an opening
angle of one degree, which is quite good
for a sonar, we get
some pretty bad resolution if we move
a bit away from our vehicle.
So we're 100 meter distance or vehicle
just disappeared.
And we also cannot tell what is ahead of
our vehicle that way.
So if we look back to how far
ocean is mapped,
the 100 percent mapping actually comes
from satellites, which look at the
ocean surface. And then the second
level, kind of 100 meter resolution,
this is boats.
So they will get about to 200, 100
meter resolution. So they've covered 10
to 15 percent of our oceans.
And then we've had a couple of ATVs
that got close to the ocean floor to give
us a bit of a better resolution in some
areas.
And we cannot just use sound
to
orient ourselves.
Sound is also generally very interesting
thing to look at in our oceans.
So if we just listen,
there are a couple of interesting things
we hear. We can notice how sounds
that we always hear slightly change
depending on weather and other conditions
and the lower frequency, the further we
can hear something. So there are these
stories that there
are things that were heard that nobody
knows where they came from or what they
might be.
And there are some interesting, nice
services where you can listen to the sea
floor. But there are other things
in there that we're not so much supposed
to hear and that have to first
be looked at and then may be removed.
And then sometimes bits are
accident additionally removed.
So we can't tell which bits have
communication in there that we're not
supposed to hear.
So those hydrophones are coming online
and offline sometimes, but you can listen
to them on the Internet sometimes.
And then researchers also
give you access to some things.
So I've got three examples for you to
listen to.
So this is what a whale sounds like,
sped up 10 times.
Then this
is more of a not
so animal like.
So you might recognize this sounds from
vehicle slowing down.
So these are larger things moving around
in our oceans, in this case, icebergs.
You can also hear icebergs coughing, for
example, like that, and then
curious human activity.
Those are basically very loud
explosions at the seafloor trying to
find out what's going on underneath,
finding oil and other things.
Now, in my description
of this talk, I wrote somewhere, it's not
all that difficult and expensive, but
I've just been telling you how these
things are complicated.
And I can tell you commercial sonars are
quite expensive, but
we've got a chance now with electronics
getting smaller and smaller.
This reduces the size of the things that
we can build and therefore
we don't have to carry a 60 or multiple
ton vehicle around anymore if you want to
do tests.
So we've got
high energy batteries now,
which I've got
here one, and then
I can just use a phone.
To use as a computer,
we can use small,
so, yeah, it's just a battery,
which is nice and compact
and a small phone,
and then
these were used quite creatively by
students in a robotics competition.
They are very useful for soaking up water
that's been spilled.
And this makes it quite good, waterproof
container for your electronics on
your robot and your batteries.
So this is done.
Well, I wanted to show.
And another couple of interesting things
that you can see from people starting to
build their own boats and robots
is drinking bottles make nice,
fairly pressure proof containers for
a few for smaller depth.
So ranges are good for building
engines to change the weight of your
vehicle. So, for example, the glider that
you see at the center here is one
of those.
And then on the sensor side,
it's a bit harder still to find things.
So there are things called fish finders
that people use on boats to find fish,
but they shouldn't be usable for
sonar detection as well.
And then under the words
kroen audio or whale
listening, you'll find hydrophones,
which are microphones specifically for
listening to underwater sounds.
But those still need a lot of work to be
really useful in
boxes like this.
So they need reversing
and looking at additional amplifying
circuits and analysis and things like
that.
But it's ready to play with
and things have gotten smaller.
So I think you guys
will hopefully have some good ideas of
how we can build smaller and better
vehicles with everyday hackable objects.
So we're talking about communities.
If you've gotten interested in maritime
robotics from this,
there are a couple of forums on our
movies and our Emmys are movies
are the box style vehicles.
But they also sometimes talk about the
flight style vehicles.
Some pilots from air and land
vehicles have been adapted for underwater
work.
There are also some competitions, mostly
for students.
But what's really interesting is
they published their papers so you can
find the cheap solutions
and the simple solutions that are
effective and that students came up
with creatively in those papers.
There are two quite interesting
challenges to watch. There's the Micro
Transat Challenge, which is about sailing
the ocean on a two meter long boat,
which has not yet been completed
for the last couple of years.
It's been going and especially
the ones that start on the U.K.
side usually don't even make it to the
finishing line, which is quite
interesting. Think about how difficult
clearly it then must be to build a
sailing boat that can autonomously
navigate our oceans.
And then quite recently, the Shell Ocean
X Prize came out, which is basically
about mapping a large area of the ocean
floor in a very high resolution and
a very short amount of time.
So it's going to be quite exciting what
happens with those two competitions.
But before I send you all out to build
your own robots,
a few things about being responsible in
this area.
I do not know what the legal rules
are for putting stuff into the sea.
Many other people are not so sure about
that either. So an ROV
turned out in nature
protected area and this is what happened.
It was not from the beginning quite clear
who would have to pay for getting the
vehicle out there, who was responsible
for the damage to the coral reefs that
was done.
So a lot of these things, especially
about robotics in the sea, are not fully
clear yet.
Then just please do not let her
think about how to get your vehicle back
if things go wrong and think about
careful testing before you rely on your
system being autonomous.
I'm used to using some materials that,
for example, may have this sticker on
them and then I normally
use them in the lab. But if I think about
putting them on a vehicle, I should check
for these things and so should we all.
There are issues with marine life forms
moving from, for example, one lake to
another, invasive invasive
species.
So before you go to a lake or switch
between different experiment locations,
look up these things, look up how to
clean your materials so you
don't transport something by accident.
And finally, something for you to
consider when designing your circuits.
Saltwater is conductive.
If you get your hands wet in saltwater
and then you touch a robot and there are
voltages that are higher than,
I don't know, a few tens of volts.
Keep in mind, your skin resistance is
significantly reduced and the only thing
that protects you is the body resistance,
which is significantly smaller.
So I am actively looking
for more people to discuss these robots
things with.
If you know about more places to listen
to hydrophones, if you're building your
own robots,
please come talk.
Let's hang out on AC.
Let's discuss things on Twitter.
Let us exchange more exciting
competitions and events that are
happening.
So I have
a few more minutes for questions now.
Thank you. This.
That is really interesting.
Thank you.
We have a signal angel who
hopefully has some questions and we also
have microphones here in the room.
So if you want to know some more,
come here to my phone.
One until six over there
on the edge.
And we have the first question, please,
from the signal Angel
Tompsett Maxus asking, why not fulling
the robot with oil to prevent the
crushing for weight control?
This is done for some things.
So you'll find, for example, that
batteries are filled with oil,
but you usually also want to modify
things or replace broken
things and similar things.
So you can, for example, embed your
entire electronics in wax as well,
which is a lot less annoying and will not
leak as much.
But yeah, basically you want to take
things apart occasionally.
Do you have other questions on the
Internet?
No.
So probably people will come directly to
you to talk about that.
Also email
anybody in the room who wants to have
their voice heard.
Yes, over there at microphone four,
please.
Hello. Have you considered
the
Bluetooth some sonars
which are
available for fishing?
So I've read that there are
Sonus, which you can connect to over your
phone, I think, which will speak
Bluetooth.
Yes, those are being discussed
in the RV forums as well.
I'm currently more interested in a
about one order of magnitude cheaper
handheld sonar because
I think those Bluetooth ones were around
400, 500 euros
per piece.
So as an order of magnitude sonas,
you start thinking in thousands of euros,
the handheld fishfinder,
cheap devices you can get for less
than a hundred.
And then the Bluetooth ones got
significantly more expensive.
But there are people who are interested
in using those.
And then also as an order of magnitude,
the hydrophone that I've linked, there is
a bit over 100 dollars.
So that's kind of you either get
something fairly cheap, but you have to
put in a lot of work or you get fairly
high prices very quickly.
Wow. So we have microphone five,
please.
Yes. You mentioned the extreme pressure
and these steps in the water.
So how do you test for it to just throw
it into the ocean?
And, um, or is there some
way to simulate this
at affordable prices on land?
Oh, this is a very nice question.
Yes. So basically, test
is just put it
into a swimming pool.
There are tests for training facilities
for divers. If you're lucky, you can get
into one of those.
And then the next level is
what we tested in was a self-propelled
autoclave, which is, of course, something
that you don't really have standing
around. But maybe someone you know who
does materials testing does
and then more
dedicated other really expensive test
chambers at Oceanographic Institutes
that you won't really get into.
So that's all I know about testing.
But if there are creative other ideas.
Thank you. And microphone one, please.
So these
environment seems somewhat familiar.
And salt mines, I
mean, some some of these salt mines have
salt. It's very salty lakes.
Do you know of anyone interested in
exploring the
salt mine lakes or do you
actually testing them or like
so I've not come across this, but
I'm just someone who's looking into
this area, quite frankly, myself,
if you're interested in finding out, I
would probably go to the open RMV
forums because those have a lot of people
who use them and then tell the story
of what they do is my impression.
So it looks like an interesting
thing to do.
Absolutely.
We have one last question from the
signal. Angel, please.
Thank you. How do you navigate underwater
since you probably can't use GPS?
Um, mostly
you just try and remember what you've
done last.
So you've got
you've got your local navigation where
you use a sonar and you just try
to recognize maybe landmarks that, you
know beforehand or just you react to what
you've got around you.
Or alternatively, you try to have
a really good you that will not
make increase the area too
much over time.
So you just remember every single
step you made and you hope that you don't
get into any streams
of water that will take you off
completely, of course.
And then there's an additional thing that
you can do, which is you can have
on bigger experiments, you have a boat at
the surface which will at the start
talk to the vehicle when it's reached its
goal depth, and then it'll
do some like twenty minutes
of the vehicle moving in circles,
looking where the vehicle appears in the
sonar of the boat.
And then you can kind of say, OK, this is
your zero position of you now,
which of course is not something that you
can do with a smaller vehicle, but this
is the principles that made news
great.
Thank you.
Thanks. Lee Lafourche.
Everybody else can come to you afterwards
or tomorrow. Thank you.