![]() One of the Driftcams passed all previous tests and was released at dusk. National Geographic and Second Star Robotics team members deploying the Driftcam “Dory.” Image courtesy of April Cook, Nova Southeastern University. After a Driftcam clears those stages, it is deployed untethered to a relatively shallow depth (50 meters or about 164 feet) to confirm that all the things tested before are working while the device is fully autonomous. ![]() Then they are set in the water while tethered to a small boat, where fine adjustments to the ballast are made to accommodate for the local water density. First, each Driftcam’s communication and buoyancy engine are tested in the ship’s dry lab. This expedition is the first time these new model Driftcams are being tested at sea. However, the true test lies at sea, where conditions may not always be favorable, predictable, or possible to simulate in lab conditions. The National Geographic Society (NGS) Driftcams were tested during development at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at the University of Maryland, and designed to overcome obstacles in the field, including communication errors, lost controls, and becoming physically lost. Because of this, a large part of ocean engineering consists of rigorous testing and incorporating system redundancies before deployment in the open ocean. Releasing tens of thousands of dollars of instrumentation into the ocean is tricky - you may not get it back once it’s in the water.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |