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[Project image] Telesupervised Adaptive Ocean Sensor Fleet (TAOSF)
Head: John Dolan
Contact: Gregg Podnar (gwp@cmu.edu)

Mailing address:
Carnegie Mellon University
Robotics Institute
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213


Associated lab/group: Tele-Supervised Autonomous Robotics

For more information, see this project's homepage.

Jump to: Project Description | Personnel | Publications

Project Description

Global ecosystems are changing as evidenced by increased frequency and severity of harmful algal blooms (HABs) in U.S. coastal environments and worldwide. Under certain conditions, fast-growing species of unicellular algae (a phytoplankton) rapidly form high-density blooms.

The harmful or toxic species can cause mass mortalities of marine organisms, disrupt ecosystem dynamics, and also cause a variety of human and animal illnesses. Other significant economic losses occur due to aquaculture business, fisheries, and tourism.

Scientific HAB studies have relied on collecting discrete water samples from hard-to-schedule, expensive research ships. Other studies use anchored or drifting sensor buoys which cannot be repositioned, do not enter coastal areas where HABs cause the greatest damage, and have limited operational lives. We are developing a HAB Investigation Telesupervised Adaptive Sensor System (HABITASS) to address these limitations.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is expanding an existing Ocean Atmosphere Sensor Integration System (OASIS) fleet that performs in-situ air and ocean surface observations. By extending the capabilities of OASIS to include a telesupervision software architecture, adaptive autonomous fleet control, and HAB-specific sensors, HABITASS will provide:

Each platform is tasked from and communicates its data back to the Tele-Science Workstation.

By supporting oceanographers with multi-robot control software and automated science data analysis, this work will form a critical segment of the ocean portion of the Earth Science Sensor Web concept, supporting the prediction of outbreaks of HABs several days in advance of their occurrence, and providing more detailed information about the severity and the duration of any given outbreak.

This work is supported by a grant for Advanced Information Systems Technology from NASA's Earth Science Technology Office.

Personnel [Past Members]

Name Title Email Address
Christopher Baker PhD Student, RI tallbaker@cmu.edu
John's personal homepage John Dolan Senior Systems Scientist jmd@cs.cmu.edu
Alberto Elfes Principal Member of Technical Staff, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Alan's personal homepage Alan D. Guisewite Webmaster/Special Proj Asst adg@cmu.edu
Jeff Hosler Software R&D Manager, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Bryan Low PhD Student, ECE klow@andrew.cmu.edu
John Moisan Oceanographer, NASA GSFC Wallops Flight Facility
Tiffany Moisan Research Scientist, NASA GSFC Wallops Flight Facility
Gregg's personal homepage Gregg Podnar Program Manager gwp@cmu.edu
Ellie Lin Ratliff PhD Student, RI elliel@andrew.cmu.edu
Stephen's personal homepage Stephen B Stancliff Research Programmer stancliff@cmu.edu

Publications

Note: This list may not be comprehensive. It contains only those publications in the RI publications database. Entries are listed in reverse chronological order.


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