Aquatic Soft Robots for Environmental Sensing

With the expansion in the oceans of human activities towards more extreme environments, state-of-the-art underwater robotics technologies have progressively become less suited at coping with the increased degree of complexity of their missions. As an example, the offshore oil industry is growingly involved in operating in deeper waters, where delicate ecosystems such as deep-sea corals, sponges and hydrothermal vents are threatened for the first time. Similarly, coastal waters are progressively exposed to more intense pressure from human exploitation. The energy and seabed mining sectors and, more than ever, the marine renewable energy sector, need to acquire baseline and on-going surveys throughout the life history of submerged infrastructures and their interaction with the surrounding ecosystems.

Currently, operations of this kind rely extensively on human divers, with partial support from underwater robots, and tend to be prohibitively expensive and dangerous. Traditional robots are simply not suitable to acquiring in-situ measurements in very close proximity to submerged structures or living organisms.

In order for the limitations of existing underwater robots to be overcome, an innovative and disruptive approach has to be brought forward. This project will investigate a technology with the potential for this change - aquatic soft-robotics. By leveraging the results and experiences from our previous work, we will develop and study a soft-robotic system which exploits size-change and pulsed-jetting to cancel viscous drag and provide efficient thrust for propulsion and manoeuvring.

Combining the results of this study, an efficient manoeuvring system, with the inherent properties of soft robotics (low cost, insensitivity to high pressure at depth, and mitigation of damage to both the robot and the environment in cases of collision) will enable the development of an innovative robotic platform with enhanced mobility for marine environmental monitoring with improved operating capabilities and able to operate in adverse weather, in cluttered aquatic environments and at close proximity with submerged infrastructures or delicate aquatic ecosystems.

The proposed project addresses the growing need in the marine industry to deliver innovative subsea technologies for enhanced operational flexibility and safety in services at sea.

The outcome from the present research are related to the demand for technologies which enable a safe and cost-effective surveillance of marine environments with major implications both for scientific purposes and industry, alike.

Global oil and gas exploration and production, as an example, has expanded into more challenging environments such as the deep-sea, a realm that is often inhabited by biologically diverse and fragile ecosystems such as cold-water coral reefs, sponge grounds and hydrothermal vents. The energy and seabed mining sectors, as a whole, along with decommissioning operations of offshore platforms requires to acquire baseline and on-going surveys throughout the life history of these infrastructures and their interaction with the surrounding ecosystems. A tasks for which current robotics technology is inadequate. A further example where existing underwater robotic technology has proved unfit lies in the maintenance and monitoring of renewable marine energy resources, where the difficulty of maintaining or monitoring these structures represents a significant economical bottleneck in producing energy from renewable solutions.

The major long-term expected outcome of the proposed project will be the introduction of a novel aquatic observation system which, endowed with superior manoeuvrability and survivability, will match the demand of offshore operations in scenarios such as current-swept, unstructured environments and proximity to underwater infrastructures or fragile ecosystems. The structural compliance of the robotic system will enable navigation in environments precluded to current robotic systems, enhanced safety of
operation and even interaction with seabed organisms.

In the long term the outcome of this project might:
- provide a tool for performing safer offshore operations by UK industries involved in the maritime and energy sector (see support letter from Lloyds Register Foundation)
- provide a cost-effective instrument to gather punctual information on the state of aquatic ecosystems, supporting policy making and Environmental Impact Assessment of coastal areas;
- improve the scientific capacities to observe the benthic environment at the finest scale (see support letter from NOCS).
- increase cost-effectiveness and competitiveness of the new offshore economy via the automation of maintenance operation of marine renewable energy plants.