The proposed project will refine the Cool Robot, an autonomous solar-powered mobile robot, and demonstrate its potential to conduct significant scientific observations in Greenland over vast distances. Two field deployments, a week-long circuit around Summit Camp in year two and a 1,500-km traverse from Summit to NEEM and back in year three, will collect data on snow-surface characteristics and elevations as ground truth for satellite data and air samples to assess spatial and temporal variations in atmospheric chemistry near the snow surface. Ground-based data collection is crucial to furthering our understanding of glaciology and environmental sciences in Greenland. This collaborative project among Dartmouth College, UNH and CRREL builds on a successful Small Grant for Exploratory Research, a student-based pilot study that designed, fabricated, and field-tested the simple four-wheel drive, solar-powered Cool Robot. This project will provide critical performance data on robot mobility, power systems, navigation and communications over a vast polar snowfield and thus forge a path to expand the use of mobile robots to support science and logistics operations in the Greenland. Potential uses of the Cool Robot are traverses to collect glaciological data, snow characterization to study climate change, biological sampling, atmospheric and snow chemistry and photochemistry surveys, micrometeorite sampling and site inspections for meteorite fields, crevasse detection in advance of manned traverses, airfield geophysical surveys, and routine snow-road surveys. Arrays of mobile robots would allow scientific instruments to be dynamically positioned based on preliminary data or to respond to specific events. Array-based campaigns could include study of the polar atmosphere, magnetosphere, troposphere, and sub-glacial geology using a diverse set of instruments: magnetometers, GPS receivers, snow property measurement, and ground penetrating radar. The project supports instrument development and deployment, increased logistics capability and reduced costs using the Cool Robot, and is an opportunity to train students in engineering and arctic research. View the Cool Robots website http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/crobots/.
This project developed the Cool Robot - an autonomous solar-powered mobile robot - into a roving instrument platform for supporting scientific observation in Greenland. Ground-based data collection is crucial to furthering our understanding of glaciology and environmental sciences in Polar regions. However, expensive logistics support for human field camps constrains the spatial and temporal extent of such measurements. The Cool Robot provides a roving science platform for summertime use in Greenland, enabling sampling of scientific data related to the region’s glaciology and snow-atmosphere chemistry over larger regions and for longer timespans than would be possible using manned instruments. The project also provided performance data on robot mobility, power systems, navigation and communications helping to forge a path to expand the use of mobile robots to support science and logistics operations in the Polar regions. This collaborative project between Dartmouth College and the University of New Hampshire (UNH) provided for 1) a new solar power system that can provide sufficient energy over a 24 hour day at high latitudes to power the robot continually and 20-60 W of power to towed instruments, 2) human factors engineering that provides easy access to the robot in the field, 3) improved navigation and control of the robot, including an interface between the robot and instruments to achieve arbitrary sampling protocols, 4) a self-contained aerosol instrument package for measuring snow-air chemistry, and 5) a three-week deployment demonstrating over 200 km of autonomous operation. Dartmouth led improvements to the solar powered Cool Robot, while UNH provided the aerosol measurement package to help demonstrate that the Cool Robot will facilitate long-duration and long-range scientific investigations on polar ice sheets. We designed a package that would count the number of aerosol particles and quantify the abundance of absorbing particles (expected to be mainly black carbon). Priorities were to keep the package as light as possible, and to limit the amount of power required to make the measurements, so that the robot would be able to conduct science nearly constantly rather than needing to make frequent stops to recharge. Within a June 2013 field deployment, we conducted several successful tests crossing the station generator plume out to much greater distances than had been possible on foot in an earlier deployment to evaluate the instruments in 2011. On one survey our most distant plume crossing was nearly 10 km downwind. The 2013 tests demonstrated that solar powered autonomous rovers like Cool Robot can make important science measurements in one of the harshest environments on earth. We also conducted several bidirectional grid surveys (randomly spaced 100-m x 100-m grids with lines at 5-m spacing) to characterize vertical melt channels resulting from a 2012 surface melt event at Summit Camp, including comparison of the performance of two different ground-based radar systems in detecting the channels, and comparison with satellite imagery. 70% to 85% of the budget for U.S. Antarctic and Arctic research pays for the logistics needed to conduct science. Reducing this logistics burden greatly expands research opportunities in Polar Regions. The Cool Robot is the first solar-powered platform developed specifically for polar science. The project generated educational value in both engineering and science through student participation in refinement, deployment, and evaluation of the robot and the development and fielding of portable instrument packages. Following a successful field season in Greenland, the robot is being used in field deployments in Antarctica as well.
