Future scientific and technological efforts to achieve better understanding of oceans and water-related applications will rely heavily on our ability to jointly consider communications, actuation and sensing in a unified system that includes instruments, vehicles, human operators and sensors of all types. The goals of this project are to design networking tools for mobile underwater networks, develop novel navigation mechanisms for communication-constrained autonomous underwater vehicles and to ultimately integrate sensing and classification to provide solutions for the exploration-exploitation tradeoff.
This project will lead to development of underwater communication methods with applications to science, security, and industry in the areas of environmental monitoring, aquatic eco-system analysis, ocean accident remediation, surveillance for defense applications, homeland security, oil and gas, aquaculture, geological and oceanographic science, and marine biology. It will also contribute to the training of new information technology professionals and scientists with expertise in interdisciplinary research spanning underwater networks, oceanography and computer science.