Cooperative Agreement NA14OAR0110262

The Tampa Deep Sea Xplorers LLC (TDSX) will develop a compact underwater light detection and ranging (LIDAR) system for integration into small remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) under a $128,918 Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The Phase I SBIR project will prove the feasibility of reducing the size and weight of a LIDAR system for internal installation in...

This Project Grant from the National Science Foundation Division of Ocean Sciences, under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050), provides $298,461 to the University of California San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography for the development of an autonomous underwater vehicle to measure marine snow transport. The goal of the project, running from April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2025, is to design, fabricate, and test an inexpensive (~$10K) self-ballasting underwater vehicle equipped with...

This Project Grant from the National Science Foundation Division of Ocean Sciences provides $118,677 to support research titled "COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: AN AUTONOMOUS PROFILING VEHICLE FOR CONCURRENT ACOUSTIC, VISUAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL MEASUREMENTS IN THE MESOPELAGIC OCEAN." The award runs from September 1, 2021 through August 31, 2024. The funding will allow researchers at Stony Brook University, working through the university's Research Foundation, to develop an autonomous...

This $196,007 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) supports the development of an innovative underwater robot testing facility at the Kilo Nalu Natural Coastal Marine Observatory off the coast of O'ahu, Hawaii. The award to the University of Hawaii at Manoa will fund the acquisition of acoustic modems, an acoustic localization system, and an autonomous underwater vehicle to create a mobile robot testing and training platform. Integrated with...

The University of Rhode Island will receive $894,792 under a three-year Project Grant from the National Science Foundation Division of Ocean Sciences. The grant will fund the collaborative research project "An Autonomous Profiling Vehicle for Concurrent Acoustic, Visual and Environmental Measurements in the Mesopelagic Ocean" from September 2021 through August 2024. This award is part of the NSF's Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050), which supports basic research in the atmospheric,...

Marine Advanced Robotics, Inc. was awarded a $300,000 Project Grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under the NOAA Small Business Innovation Research Program to further develop collaborative algorithms for autonomous swarming of uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs). The company's Wave Adaptive Modular Vessel technology provides a family of portable, foldable and energy-efficient USVs that can rapidly deploy and map predefined survey areas without existing infrastructure....

The Department of the Navy Secretary of the Navy Office of Naval Research awarded a $999,296 Project Grant to the University of California San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography to develop an autonomy testbed for heterogeneous unmanned vehicle systems (UVX) teams. The grant is funded through the Basic and Applied Scientific Research program (CFDA 12.300), which supports research with potential to improve naval operations and train future researchers. Under the one-year award beginning...

The University of California San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography received a two-year, $501,139 Project Grant from the Department of the Navy Secretary of the Navy Office of Naval Research to deploy two underwater gliders for high-resolution surveys of the upper ocean under the Basic and Applied Scientific Research program (CFDA 12.300). The gliders will collect multi-variable data to support and stimulate basic and applied research with potential to improve naval operations through...

The National Science Foundation Division of Ocean Sciences awarded a $199,831 Project Grant to the University of Hawaii at Manoa under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) to support the final development and at-sea testing of a Hadal Water Column Profiler. The profiler, capable of reaching depths of 11 km, will allow for repeated vertical profiling of temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, turbulent mixing, current velocity, acoustic backscatter, and video. It also features an...

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) provides $1,354,056 to the University of California San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography to jointly implement a new measurement technique called distributed acoustic sensing. This technique will generate high-resolution (10 m in space, minutes in time) images of ocean temperature and current velocity fields above a 34-km cable laid on the seafloor off the Azores islands. The goal is to...