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New light for underwater marine life in tidal

By: Lewis Holdsworth 06/02/2015 Washington University

General Tidal

Researchers building a new underwater robot they’ve dubbed the “Millennium Falcon” certainly have reason to believe it will live up to its name. The robot will deploy instruments to gather information in unprecedented detail about how marine life interacts with underwater equipment used to harvest wave and tidal energy.

The Millennium Falcon robot maneuvers underwater in a testing tank on campus. The monitoring instruments (white box in the middle) are guided by the robot's thrusters toward a docking station on the bottom of the tank. Researchers controlled the machine from above.

The Millennium Falcon robot maneuvers underwater in a testing tank on campus. The monitoring instruments (white box in the middle) are guided by the robot's thrusters toward a docking station on the bottom of the tank. Researchers controlled the machine from above.

Researchers still don’t fully understand how animals and fish will be affected by ocean energy equipment, and this instrument seeks to identify risks that could come into play in a long-term marine renewable energy project.

“This is the first attempt at a ‘plug-and-socket’ instrumentation package in the marine energy field. If successful, it will change the way that industry views the viability of environmental research and development,” said Brian Polagye, a University of Washington assistant professor of mechanical engineering and one of the project’s leaders.

The UW research team tested the Millennium Falcon and the instruments it transports, called the Adaptable Monitoring Package, underwater for the first time in January in a deep tank on campus. Researchers will continue testing in Puget Sound under more challenging conditions starting this month. They hope this tool will be useful for pilot tidal- and wave-energy projects and eventually in large-scale, commercial renewable-energy projects.

“We’ve really become leaders in this space, leveraging UW expertise with cabled instrumentation packages like those developed for the Ocean Observatories Initiative. What’s novel here is the serviceability of the system and our ability to rapidly deploy and recover the instruments at low cost,” said Andrew Stewart, an ocean engineer at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory.

The instrument package can track and measure a number of sights and sounds underwater. It has a stereo camera to collect photos and video, a sonar system, hydrophones to hear marine mammal activity, sensors to gauge water quality and speed, a click detector to listen for whales, dolphins and porpoises, and even a device to detect fish tags. A fibre optic cable connection back to shore allows for real-time monitoring and control, and the device will be powered by a copper wire.

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New light for underwater marine life in tidal

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