VSP - VISITING SCIENTIST PROGRAM - ADVANCED PASSIVE ACOUSTIC WHALE MONITORING WITH AUV TOWED ARRAY. ARRAY INTEGRATION WORK AT WOODS HOLE INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY AND PARTICIPATION IN FIELD TRIALS
Abstract
VISITING SCIENTIST PROGRAM - ADVANCED PASSIVE ACOUSTIC WHALE MONITORING WITH AUV TOWED ARRAY. ARRAY INTEGRATION WORK AT WOODS HOLE Technical: The goal of this VSP application is to conduct an international collaborative effort between the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), USA and the Acoustic Research Laboratory (ARL) at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore. The research project is on passive acoustic marine mammal monitoring using an advanced hydrophone line array towed by an autonomous underwater vehicle. ARL at NUS has developed an advanced and unique digital thin line array (DTLA) of hydrophones for passive acoustic monitoring. This lightweight array has been designed to be towed by small underwater autonomous platforms such as AUVs and USVs. The first part of the collaboration would be to integrate the DTLA and its associated receiver system with the REMUS 100 AUV platform provided by WHOI. This integration work is planned during August 2016 and is expected to take about a week. After the integration work is completed limited trials would be conducted in the lake facilities near WHOI. During the second part of the collaboration an ocean field trial would be conducted to test the effectiveness of the AUV-DTLA system in detecting and tracking marine mammals. This field trip is also expected to take about one week. This interdisciplinary initiative, involving marine biology, ocean acoustics, autonomous underwater vehicle robotics and underwater communication and networking, is a system engineering challenge, such a cutting-edge array system has the potential to revolutionize studies of whale behavior, ecology, and population biology. The VSP fund will be used to pay for the 2 trips (integration and trail) of the NUS PI to U.S. b. Relevance: In addition to its contributions to marine mammal monitoring, which has important aspects of mitigating the impacts of Navy sonar operations on marine mammals, the AUV Towed Array system has potential to become one of the most useful passive acoustic technologies for underwater surveillance in harbors, coastal and open ocean. This system can also be used for acoustically probing the ocean (i.e., acoustical oceanography), as well as for marine resource exploration and management applications. This towed array system will have the capability to be operated as a single unit, so it can be a stand-alone instrument on many types of vessels for ocean exploration and underwater target detection. The two PI~s of the proposed effort are invited to a planning meeting for a large ocean acoustic field experiment in spring 2017 sponsored by the ONR. Should this first WHOI-NUS project complete successfully, they will join the ONR experiment with our integrated system. The effort directly supports the ~Assure Access to Maritime Battle Space~ S&T focus area. c. Coordination: Dr. Kyle Becker and Dr. Robert Headrick (ONR Code 32) d. Desired Outcome: (1) successful integration of DTLA and REMUS 100 AUV, (2) detail report describing the integration and sea trial results, and (3) future collaboration projects
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Sep 23, 2016
- Source ID
- N629091612158
Entities
People
- Venugopalan Pallayil
Organizations
- National University of Singapore
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy