ASU researchers make breakthroughs in ocean sensing technology


A recent article on industryeurope.net featured the work of ASU researcher Cody Youngbull, who has spent years working with a team at the Biodesign Institute to develop Sensorbots: small, transparent spherical devices that measure underwater environmental events and conditions.

This new technology marks the beginning of a new era in ocean sensing by fulfilling the demand for equipment capable of withstanding the inhospitable and underexplored ecosystems of the oceans. As Sensorbot technology develops, they will ultimately be capable of operating in semi-autonomous self-propulsed robotic swarms, moving under remote control in a 3D geometric formation through precisely controlled volumes of seawater. 

According to Youngbull, “because the scale of phenomena is so vast in the oceans, sensing networks are an exciting thing. Rather than delivering a single robot to a single point in space and then serially moving it around, often missing dynamic phenomena - an array of Sensorbots can cover a wide field, permitting real-time investigations of episodic events.”

Sensorbots will help answer questions relating to topics as diverse and complex as oil spills, animal population migrations, hydrogeological flows, emission plumes, ocean acidification, hazardous waste flows, and other chemical distributions.

Article source: Industry Europe

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