A researcher in
FAU's College of Engineering and Computer Science has received a $469,822
grant from the
National Science Foundation to advance technology on risk-informed
decision making
that will enable unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) to team up with humans
to work on a wide
variety of civilian marine missions.
(February 17, 2016) Robotic
boats that can move, think and make decisions on their own to help humans may
be closer than you think. The College of Engineering and Computer Science has
received an NSF grant for the project.
The notion of robotic boats that can move, think and make
decisions on their own to help human supervisors may be closer than you think.
A researcher in the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Florida
Atlantic University has received a $469,822 grant from the National Science
Foundation to advance technology on risk-informed decision making that will
enable unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) to team up with humans to work on a
wide variety of civilian marine missions.
In recent years, USVs also known as unmanned robotic boats,
have been increasingly used in many marine applications including ocean
sampling, maritime search and rescue, hydrologic surveys, harbor surveillance,
defense, and industrial offshore supply and support, which involves the extraction
of both fossil fuels and renewable energies. USVs also are used to assist
autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) for studying various types of marine
species, coral reefs, and searching for natural resources.
“There are a number of civilian applications where deploying
a team of small unmanned surface vehicles operating under the guidance of human
supervisors can significantly reduce costs, improve safety, and increase
operational efficiencies for marine missions,” said Karl von Ellenrieder, Ph.D.,
principal investigator of the grant and professor in the Department of Ocean
and Mechanical Engineering and associate director of the SeaTech Institute for
Ocean Systems Engineering at FAU. “Significant advances have been made in the
area of distributed robotics, where a team of robots carries out a complex
task. Our project will build on this progress.”