Maritime Autonomous Sampling and Control

Informations

Funding country

Norway

Acronym

-

URL

-

Start date

1/1/2020

End date

12/31/2024

Budget

1,563,207 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

The MASCOT project connects new approaches from statistics and control engineering to contribute in improved understanding of the oceans. We focus on frontal regions and river plumes where freshwater meets saline ocean waters. In the longer run, methods and algorithms that are developed in the project can be used for decision support in fisheries, aquaculture and environmental monitoring systems. The focus of the MASCOT project is on gathering cost-effective data - where and when to sample data that can have a substantial impact on the underlying decisions? Renowned oceanographer Walter Munk called the 20th century, the 'century of undersampling'. He said we were gathering too little data and that one needed to plan the data acquisition better. This is particularly relevant in ocean-facing Norway with its complex fjord systems intermixed with coastal skerries. We use ocean models and satellite data to build prior models of a river plume. Application areas are Nidelva in Trondheim and Douro in Porto. We then deploy an autonomous vehicle to make in-situ measurements in the plume. This gives a refined view of the plume variation. The vehicle has an onboard AI algorithm that we develop. This enables the AUV to figure out where and when it is highly informative to sample. In this way it can efficiently explore the plume. Results of the MASCOT project contribute to improved autonomous exploration of areas of interest. Website: https://wiki.math.ntnu.no/mascot