1 Hydrobionics Master thesis of Per-Johan Sandlund & Hans Jakob Føsker The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Spring 2014 Students: Hans Jakob Føsker Per-Johan Sandlund Supervisors: Steinar Killi Etienne Gernez 2 3 Students Hans Jakob Føsker, 29 Per-Johan Sandlund, 29 From Oslo, Norway From Nordmaling, Sweden Mail: [email protected] Mail: [email protected] Phone: +47 40648591 Phone: +46 70 2227953 Web: www.Hydrobionics.no Web: www.Hydrobionics.no 4 5 Table of contents Intro 6 Broad research 16 Influential projects 22 Scope definition 36 Concept ideation 40 Focused research 68 Concept development 80 Result 102 User secenario 106 Reflection 116 Image: wallpaperswide.com 6 7 Intro We propose an open Structure of the report We start with a brief introduction. source bionic AUV to allow After the introduction we will outline the research that has influenced this project. Then we will define the scope of our concept before taking you hobbyists to conduct deep through our development phase. After the concept development phase, we will sum up our result and ocean exploration and in the offer our own reflection on the project. process help further ocean science as a whole. 8 9 Land 29% Explored 5% Ocean 71% Not explored 95% The Pacific ocean seen from space. Image from google earth. The oceans Their importance The worlds oceans cover 71% of The oceans contain a complex our planet, yet scientists estimate interdependent biosphere about that only 5% of the water has been which we understand very little. We do explored1. Of those 5%, most of know, however that we are completely reliant on it as the algae supplies our what we know is really only about the atmosphere with 70% of its oxygen. It’s surface, or waters shallow enough the ocean, not the rainforest that keeps for human divers. The world record us breathing 1. Yet, through ignorance for deep diving is currently at 534 or disinterest our species is destroying it m2. Consider for a moment what at an alarming rate through overfishing, that means when the ocean has an carbon emissions and other stress average depth of 4.3 Km. factors. 2 1 http://mashable. com/2013/09/25/ocean-vs-space/ 1 http://education. nationalgeographic.com/education/ 2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ activity/save-the-plankton-breathe- Deep_diving freely/?ar_a=1 2 http://edition.cnn. com/2013/03/22/world/oceans- overfishing-climate-change/ 10 11 Edith Widder was able to capture a live giant squid on camera, by simply being Image: http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/ quiet. stories2005/s2370.htm Image: deepseanews.com Todays equipment Infiltrate Ocean research equipment today Todays deep ocean equipment is is extremely expensive, excluding typically very loud. In an environment all but the best funded teams from that is normally dead quiet, noisy doing work on deep sea exploration. equipment scares off wildlife before researchers get the chance to observe it. Edith Widder applied a change of tactics to be the first ever to capture a live giant squid on video; simply by being quiet. 12 13 Like amateur astronomers We envision a future where amateur contributions1. ocean explorers will contribute with Hopefully a similar organization and data for the scientific community in culture could help us uncover the the same way amateur astronomers mysteries of our oceans in the near do today. future. Amateur astronomers help out with data collection by providing many smaller telescopes in addition to the relatively few but large telescopes available to professional astronomers. Organizations such as the American 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Association of Variable Star Amateur_astronomy#Scientific_ Observers, help coordinate these research Targeting the hobbyist market By creating an AUV that is low cost and open source, this project aims to provide the opportunity for hobbyists to perform ocean exploration, democratizing access to the worlds ocean floors. Image: http://www.iau.org/news/ pressreleases/detail/iau0904/ 14 15 Our project We propose a bionic, autonomous underwater vehicle or AUV to infiltrate subsea habitats. Our AUVs morphology is largely based on a tuna, and has been given the name AUTuna. Based on our research we have come to believe that if we make a quiet fish looking robot, aquatic life might ignore it giving it access to undisturbed sea creatures in their natural habitat. 16 17 Broad Research How can we as industrial designers contribute to ocean research? We started this explorative project with a very broad approach. We posed the question, how can we as industrial designers could contribute to ocean research, thinking that it would probably amount to designing a sailing robot. What follows is the research and findings we made that have influenced the direction of this project. Knowing nothing about the industry we tracked down some individuals who we thought might give us the necessary insights. 18 19 Roberto De Almeida Until recently Roberto worked “Any data is better than no data!” is often in a format that is very for marineexplore.org, an ocean hard to process. Either as a lengthy research database with aggregated He also mentioned that existing scholarly journal paper, or as a data focussing on normalizing and knowledge is largely unavailable to spreadsheet with raw data values visualizing all openly available ocean the public, residing on local hard without any visual representation. data. His position there gives him a drives in researchers offices. These things make it very hard for unique birds eye view of the field. anyone without intimate knowledge He said there are a lot of black holes “A lot of research exists only on the of the work to make any sense of it. in his maps. A lot of areas remain computer of the researcher who completely unknown, and that gathered it”. rather than obsessing about data quality, it’s more important to get He went on to point out that what something out there, and refine it data is made available to the public, later. “Any data is better than no data!” – Roberto De Almeida Roberto De Almeida Ocean Data Engineer at Marinexplore Image: marinexplore.com Marineexplore.org aggregates and visualizes all openly available ocean data. 20 21 Peter Keen Peter is an operational oceanographer, meaning he makes a living out of launching and retrieving, as well as designing custom ocean research equipment. His opinion on existing technology, is that because most of it has been developed for the offshore oil & gas industry with completely different needs in mind, it is generally bad for ocean research. Overall, todays equipment lacks a more holistic approach in the design phase, which today is done by engineers solving specific tasks. Peter Keen on what should be our main focus: “Whatever you do will be great” Peter Keen Operational oceanographer. Here seen in Antarctica. Image: keen-marine.com 22 Image: keen-marine.com 23 Influential projects Influential projects The following is a summary of the projects we found in our research that have influenced our diploma. Image: wallpaperswide.com/ 24 25 “To truly appreciate and understand the oceans and it’s inhabitants, we have to Graham Hawkes holding a scale model of the Super Falcon submersible. be able to move like them: Image: Balint Porneczi/Bloomberg Gracefully and gently.” –Graham Hawkes Graham Hawkes’ Super Falcon Graham Hawkes is a marine engineer we’ve been diving with noisy motors and undersea explorer who has a and blinding lights into the waters different approach to how we as expecting to see things. humans should explore the ocean and its inhabitants. “To truly appreciate and understand the oceans and its inhabitants, we We saw a National Geographic have to be able to move like them. documentary1 featuring among Gracefully and gently.” others mr Graham Hawkes who had lots of comments on how we until just His philosophy made us believe recently have treated the oceans as more strongly in the value of animal a 2D object. It also baffled him how movements, and want to incorporate them into our project. 1 https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ZElzys4AhNs from 37:25 The Super Falcon in action. Image: Tony Wu Photography 26 27 Edith Widder on how to explore the oceans with the help of quiet platforms: “Attracting animals rather than scaring them away” Edith Widder, Image: teamorca.org Edith Widder & the Giant Squid In 2012, Dr. Edith Widder was part of In a TED Talk, Widder also comments a team of researchers who employed at length on how we are scaring off new tactics to capture video of a wildlife with our noisy equipment. 1 living giant squid. Although mankind has known about this creature for hundreds of years, no one has ever seen one alive until Widder’s team 1 http://www.ted.com/talks/ caught one on video. edith_widder_how_we_found_the_ giant_squid Their approach was to mimic the bioluminescent light show of a common jellyfish that it displays when attacked. This is a last ditch resort intended to attract something bigger than what’s attacking it. The giant squid knows that when the light show is visible, there is food near by. First giant squid ever captured on video. Image: Deepseanews.com 28 29 Image: http://www.digitallife.gr/wp- Image: https://plus.google. content/uploads/2012/03/lions04.jpg com/112302113750019621047/photos/ photo/5819182310430285106 Infiltrate the Habitat An example of a land based project that uses unobtrusive infiltration to capture unique footage, is the Beetlecam Project. The Beetlecam is an RC buggy with an armored shell mimicking a turtle. Lions mostly ignore turtles, so the Beetlecam is able to capture images that would be impossible to capture by other means.