AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Sharks 3d california science center4/30/2023 Scientists know astonishingly little about the simplest of great white behavior, let alone where they migrate, mate, or give birth, or even how long they live. For Kukulya, part of the larger team at WHOI’s Oceanographic Systems Laboratory (OSL), it was the chance to work on a fun engineering challenge in her own backyard.įor Skomal, the lure was the data. It was unlikely great whites would do the same.ĭespite the apparent implausibility, all parties opted in. At least then, the ship was sending REMUS acoustic signals on its position and was moving in a relatively straight line at a constant speed. The only time REMUS had trailed anything in motion was for a system to recover the AUV from an underway ship-with the AUV chasing down and attaching itself to a line trailing the vessel. “It’s a complicated math problem,” Kukulya said. To track a moving target, the computer brains in REMUS would have to be constantly recalculating the locations of both itself and its target. It is usually preprogrammed to swim along predetermined routes. REMUS is equipped with sonar and sensors that allow it to use sound to track its position and navigate between points. Potato Head: Its body usually stays the same, but various sensors are attached with each new undertaking-an avalanche beacon for under-ice escapades, for example, or sidescan sonar for shipwreck hunting.ĭifferent versions of the REMUS 100 had been used to search for underwater mines, to survey the Atlantic continental shelf break for fish, and to examine how ocean currents mix off Cape Cod, but none had ever been used to track a moving animal. In the crudest sense, the AUV is like a Mr. The project would use an AUV called a REMUS 100, a sleek, yellow, 5-foot, torpedo-looking vehicle that will debut on Discovery Channel as “Shark Cam.” The beauty of REMUS (an acronym for Remote Environmental Monitoring UnitS) is its low cost and versatility. Stringer had brought the parties together and pitched the project to Discovery Channel. “I really didn’t think it would, and I think a lot of people involved in the project really didn’t think it would.” “To be honest, I was completely skeptical about whether it would work,” he said. Even Nick Stringer of Big Wave Productions, the would-be director of the show, knew he was rooting for a gamble. Greg Skomal, who heads the Massachusetts Shark Research Program, wasn’t convinced either. Were they serious? “It was clearly going to be a very difficult engineering challenge,” she said. They would be refitting one of their autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVs, to track and film great white sharks. The project was peculiar-outrageous, actually. So when Kukulya’s boss, Tom Austin, came to her and said, ‘Amy, I’ve got just the project for you,’ it had to be interesting. As an engineer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), she has operated autonomous underwater vehicles beneath Arctic ice in Greenland, in a New Zealand lake to find geothermal terraces submerged by a volcanic eruption, and with Navy SEALS working on underwater docking systems. Amy Kukulya’s clients often have curious requests, but this was among the oddest.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |