Understanding Underwater Weather in Rivers
Photo by Eric Sucar
In a collaborative effort between the ScalAR Lab and Penn’s Earth and Environmental Science Faculty, Prof. Douglas Jerolmack (PennSed Group) and Prof. Hugo N. Ulloa (GEFLOW), we leverage autonomous surface vehicles equipped with sensor suites to acquire data about the Schuylkill River. This work got featured on Penn Today!
In acquiring measurements over the same spatial regions over time, gathered data can be used to model spatiotemporal fluid and sediment dynamics in the river. With learnt models, adaptive sampling strategies will be developed to actively determine the most informative sensing locations whilst operating in the river.
To further extend work in our recent publication, we are developing a winch to lower sensors into the river, to reconstruct 3D maps of sensor measurements (instead of only surface measurements), and are extending to multi-robot information gathering.
Relevant Publication:
A. K. Li et al., “Towards Understanding Underwater Weather Events in Rivers Using Autonomous Surface Vehicles,” OCEANS 2022, Hampton Roads, Hampton Roads, VA, USA, 2022, pp. 1-8, doi: 10.1109/OCEANS47191.2022.9977236.
