Last week, I highlighted our Wireless Robotics session at the M2M Conference and the use of Lego Mindstorms to build M2M prototypes.  As you may recall we are going to raffle off a system to our delegates at the session. 

This week, I want to talk about a particular prototype that has 26 other active devices.  In the Smithsonian is Scarlet Knight the robot that made the first successful Transatlantic “Flight”.

The system went from the coast of New Jersey to the Coast of Spain, per Ken Branson of Rutgers. The glider took anything but the most direct route possible from New Jersey to Spain and its pilots made as much use of the Gulf Stream as they could.

When the glider surfaces and calls the lab to upload its data, the pilot gives it a "way point" -- a spot in the ocean to which they want it to go next. The glider then aims for that spot, but is subject to currents on the way, so the trip to the next way point is usually pretty wavy, rather than direct.

This is perfectly okay, since the object of the exercise is to gather data, not to reach any particular spot at any particular time. As it happened, it took 221 days for the RU-27 to make it from New Jersey to Spain, partly because it moves slowly and partly because its route was circuitous.

After the glider was deployed, its first challenge was to reach the Gulf Stream, which meant traversing very busy commercial fishing grounds in the canyons at the end of the continental shelf, and crossing a very busy commercial shipping lane full of big ships. One of the scientists compared it to crawling across the New Jersey Turnpike at rush hour. Once that was done, though, the Gulf Stream took the glider up the east coast of North America, past the end of Newfoundland.

Once the Gulf Stream petered out, the glider pilots found themselves in the midst of many local currents and eddies. When giving the glider a way point, they had to judge the speed and direction of the currents (here satellite imagery, from our own sources and from colleagues in Spain and Portugal) and eddies was crucial. If they guessed wrong, the glider might be spun way off course; if they guessed right, they would be that much closer to Spain. They guessed right most of the time, because they got to Spain. But this was a very difficult task, never done before, so the scientists and students were learning by doing.

I'm sorry if I gave you the impression that the glider moves by "adding and subtracting ballast." It carries ballast, which it jettisons only when it's really in trouble, enabling it to reach the surface quickly. The glider moves by adjusting its buoyancy. To descend, it sucks water into its nose  by means of a pump, which is run by a small electric motor. The nose  gets heavy and dips; the glider sinks; and its wings turn the downward motion into forward motion. When it reaches its pre-programmed depth, the pump pushes the water out. The nose rises,  the glider ascends, and the wings turn the upward motion into forward motion. Thus, the glider's track, viewed from the side, looks a little like a roller coaster.

Rutgers has about 26 gliders, but they're not all "available." Their main purpose is for research on our scientists' projects -- we have three in the Antarctic at the moment. The gliders were designed and built by Teledyne-Webb Research, Inc., of Falmouth, Mass.-- originally Webb Research, until bought by Teledyne a few years ago. The RU-27 was a Slocum Electric, and so are most of our gliders. Among the 26 or so gliders there are other models whose workings I'm not up on -- one is basically a Slocum Electric, but capable of diving much deeper; one uses wax, which alternately solidifies and melts, to control its buoyancy. I'm a little dim on its specifics, too.

Rutgers has trained mostly people from other universities to use gliders, which they then go acquire on their own. The University of Delaware, for instance, owns at least one Slocum Electric, and one of their professors is in Antarctica right now. The University of South Florida, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and (I think) the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth all have similar gliders. There are many more being used by other universities.

Rutgers didn't design and doesn't build the gliders, but was the pioneer is in the use of these gliders in concert with other observing systems. Our scientists use them routinely off the New Jersey coast, covering the same space as high-frequency, shore-based radar (it skims the surface; you can't "fly under" it), satellite imagery, sea-floor sensors, buoys, and ship-based sensors. We often contribute gliders, and glider technicians and pilots, to research collaborations. I'm not sure how our scientists would respond to an offer to "rent" a glider for some commercial purpose, but that's not how we use them normally.

There are other kinds of gliders for other kinds of jobs. The University of Washington, I believe, uses gliders of their own design that are made to dive very deep, for real blue water work. This makes them different from ours, which are designed to explore the waters on the continental shelf.  with the most direct route possible. 

It uses an Iridium (News - Alert) satellite phone to call back to Rutgers University oceanographic department It has been used in the Arctic Circle and Antarctica. 

Besides the mapping I could think of a few other strategies for the device including the use of Oil spill monitoring and bacterial capture and genome mapping (something Craig Ventor has described as almost infinite).

I am working with Rutgers to secure some materials and perhaps a speaker to join our Wireless Robotics session.

Here are some fun facts, Tina Haskins posted on their blog about the robot the public calls Scarlet Knight and they called RU27.

1. RU27 called home over 1000 times during the mission to report her location and send/receive data.
2. RU27 moved her buoyancy pump approximately 22,000 times, which allowed her to…
3. Complete approximately 22,000 inflections, 11,000 dives and 11,000 climbs.
4. The raw data shows that Scarlet traveled vertically approximately 2200 kilometers (almost 1400 miles). Explanation: Glider goes more forward then up and down when it is flying.
5. Almost 16 MB of data was transferred via satellite during the mission. This is likely low for a 220-day deployment but that is due to an energy/efficiency/surface risk habit.
6. Scarlet compared to a car: A gallon of gas has approximately 131,940,000 J of energy; an efficient car can travel 30 miles on that gallon so approximately 4,398,000 J/mile. Scarlet, with currents, did 4598 miles burning 27,898,182 J having an average of about 6,067 J/mile. End result: Scarlet can cover 725 x more distance than a car with the same energy. She is a 21,700-mpg car equivalent (remember though car much bigger and goes faster!). A car could only travel 6.3 miles on the same amount of energy that Scarlet Knight used to cross the Atlantic.
7. Scarlet compared to the Rockefeller Christmas tree: The Christmas tree at Rockefeller plaza used to use approximately 3,510 kilowatt hours / day meaning Scarlet's energy used would last 3 minutes. However, in 2007 they switched to LED diodes meaning that one could now power the tree for about 8.1 minutes or send glider across the Atlantic Ocean.
   
   What I liked about this work was it took M2M beyond the boundaries I normally think about.  The Ocean in the end may not be the final frontier, but it is the closest.

And at ITEXPO in Miami Beach on Feb 2-4 It will be in walking distance.

Carl Ford (News - Alert) is a partner at Crossfire Media.

Edited by Stefanie Mosca