Abstract
Study of ocean processes is important to understanding climatic variability especially on the productive upper water-column. Ocean currents regulate the climate, it captures CO\(_2\) from the atmosphere and oxygen is generated by its plankton communities, all of which are part of the global environmental cycle which are being impacted by anthropogenic change. Much of the ocean, however, remains unexplored especially the bio-geochemical processes in the water-column which need to be examined at scale. Satellite remote sensing captures only surface effects while expensive research vessels can only make discrete observations in finite periods of time. Our work with networked marine robotics in the aerial, surface and underwater domains is at the vanguard of a new approach to scientific observation, which brings together technology to enable vessels and robots to work in tandem for capturing synoptic views of open ocean phenomena. We describe a cruise in the Spring of 2018 in the open waters of the Pacific where we employed a fleet of autonomous robots for simultaneous observations of mesoscale and sub-mesoscale features of an unexplored frontal zone. We articulate our approach to multi-vehicle coordination and challenges that lie ahead for research in this harsh domain.
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Notes
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Temperature gradients can be observed by optical remote sensing from space.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI) for supporting the 3 week cruise on the R/V Falkor and to its crew and captain. We are also grateful to SOI for providing access to the Wave Glider and to Prof. Barbara Block, Stanford University, for access to Saildrones in the mid-Pacific. RM was supported by a Post-Doctoral grant from FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) # SFRH/BPD/115093/2016. LSTS acknowledges support from the ENDURANCE program funded under the NORTE 2020 through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
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Pinto, J. et al. (2021). To Boldly Dive Where No One Has Gone Before: Experiments in Coordinated Robotic Ocean Exploration. In: Siciliano, B., Laschi, C., Khatib, O. (eds) Experimental Robotics. ISER 2020. Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, vol 19. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71151-1_42
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