Glider Programming Architecture

This research project is partially funded by NSF CSR-CSI #0720836 and NSF MRI #0821607. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in material related to this project do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
In memory of Denitsa Tilkidjieva, a PhD graduate student who worked on this project.

Students and Faculty

Hans Christian Woithe -- PhD Student, Department of Computer Science

David Boehm -- Undergraduate Researcher, Department of Computer Science

Ulrich (Uli) Kremer -- Faculty, Department of Computer Science

Collaborators

David Aragon -- Reseach Staff, Coastal Ocean Observation Lab

Scott Glenn -- Faculty, Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences

Oscar Schofield -- Faculty, Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences

Dimitris Metaxas -- Faculty, Department of Computer Science

Manish Parashar -- Faculty, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Publications

Towards a Resource-Aware Programming Architecture for Smart Autonomous Underwater Vehicles , H.C. Woithe, D. Tilkidjieva, and U. Kremer, Technical Report, Department of Computer Science, Rutgers University, DCS-TR-637, June 2008.
A Programming Architecture for Smart Autonomous Underwater Vehicles , H.C. Woithe and U. Kremer, IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, St. Louis, Missouri, October 2009.

News

We currently have two Slocum Gliders on order with a "double payload bay" configuration. The Slocum Glider is produced by Teledyne Webb Research . The delivery of the first glider is expected in November 2009. A sketch of the glider is shown below. The extended payload bay allows more flexibility by supporting different sensor, battery, and on-board computer arrangements. The gliders will have underwater acoustic communication capabilities.
Double Payload Bay Glider

Missions

These missions were conducted using the research vessel R/V Arabella from the Rutgers University Marine Field Station (RUMFS) in Tuckerton, New Jersey.

July 31, 2008 -- RU20July31.2008.mov (61MB): First mission off the coast of New Jersey with two glider deployments. The video shows the second deployment of the Slocum glider RU20. RU20 was equipped with our new programming architecture.
September 4, 2008 -- RU15: Second mission, one deployment. Successful tracking of a thermocline at around 15 meter depth off the coast of New Jersey as shown in Figure labeled Seabird CTD . The flight path of the glider is shown in Figure labeled Glider Profile . After 1500 seconds, the old programming architecture gained control again, and the glider surfaced.
September 21, 2009 -- RU10: Third mission, one deployment. RU10 was equipped with a new power measurement infrastructure that is able to measure the in-flight energy consumption of different sensors and motors. The goal of this mission was to calibrate our new power measurement board. The board was developed in collaboration with Ivan Seskar , a researcher at Winlab , and his students Yuriy Shames, Ilya Chigirev, and Murium Iqbal. The picture below shows RU10 on the surface before starting its one hour mission. The glider is connected to a buoy in case of system failure.

Last updated by Ulrich (Uli) Kremer at 2:55pm on September 24, 2009