1. Introduction
Underwater Robot Convention in JAMSTEC 2018 was held at JAMSTEC (Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology) on 25-26th August 2018. The event has been held annually since 2007, and there are three classes: AUV, Free, and Junior. AUV Class was not held in this year because it was held at the underwater robot competition in OCEANS’18 / Techno-Ocean 2018 Kobe (OTO’18).
This report provides an overview of the event including the regulations, trends of robots, and results from the viewpoint of education.
2. Free Class
In the free class, teams compete for the originality of their robot. The free class has two roles. One is acceptance of ideas that cannot be evaluated by the AUV class, and the other is a ‘next goal’ for teams participated in the junior class described later. So, there are not strict limitations on the robots and many unique robots have been created by various teams up to now.
Evaluation of the teams is based on the total of weight points, presentation points, and competition points:
(1) Weight Points 20 pt.
(2) Presentation Points 40 pt.
(3) Competition Points 40 pt.
For a combined total score of 100 points.
(1) Weight Points
The score is determined by a dry weight of the robot as shown in Table 1.
(2) Presentation Points
The teams are requested to explain about their robot by a handout (A4 1 page) and 5 minutes presentation and discussions. Presentation points are given based on the quality of the presentation, handout, technical details, and originalities.
(3) Competition Points
The competition points are scored by a 5 minute demonstration at the pool. There are two chances of demonstration for each team. Evaluation focuses on the quality of performance, technological level, and ideas.
In 2018, the sampling robot for tideland (by “Tidal Robot Production Team” from Tokyo Institute of Technology 12th Phase Machinery Department) won first prize. It is designed to run about 4 hours and get a mud sample, measure location and temperature of the tideland. High school students have made this robot and operated it. (Fig.1)
There have been a lot of unique robots in previous years, including a penguin robot, an anomalocaris robot, an archerfish robot, and a robot that supplies drinking water to divers (see Fig. 1). In 2016, Octopus shaped ROV called Sakasatako” (by Oyama College of Technology “Sakasatako” Development Team) won first prize. The name of the robot comes from a homophony of “Sakasa” as an upside down and “Kasa” as an umbrella in Japanese. “Tako” means an octopus in Japanese. Actually, the robot has an umbrella. This robot moves by closing the umbrella.
In past years, there used to be many robots that could not move at all in the water. However, owing to recent development of ready-made products such as a brushless motor, waterproof RC servo, waterproof box, motor part of a fuel pump, increasing number of teams can build more reliable robots and various ideas come true, reaching Cambrian.
3. Junior Class
3.1 Educational Target and Schedule
The junior class is for junior high, high school and technical college students. In other words, this class is for young people who are aged 13 to 20 years old. This class aims to make the above people interested in the ocean/ocean engineering and to provide STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) learning. Considering the learning contents of junior high schools and senior high schools, the static balance of forces was selected as the main learning target. There are three forces on an underwater robot: buoyancy, gravity, and thrust.
The schedule is shown in Fig.2. Each team receives the specially designed ROV kit for free beforehand. They assemble and customize the ROV for a month before the competition. While building the kit, they can ask us questions via the website (http://edurov-mark3.com/). All the parts and design data used for the ROV are also available on the website.
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3.2 Educational ROV
Educational ROV, an ROV specially designed for education by us, is shown in Fig 3. The flat plate part is the body. Buoyancy materials, thrusters, a control box, cameras, etc. can be fixed in arbitrary position of the body using a magic tape. Weight and size of the ROV is designed to make it easy for students to handle it. Table 2 shows the specifications of the ROV. Because the body and the control box is flat, building is easier than cylindrical parts. In addition, by using the magic tape for fixing parts, it is possible to arrange parts at an arbitrary position and orientation like a block toy, and it has a structure that can be easily adjusted/customized. It is possible for the users to understand the sense of balancing forces through trial and error based on statically thinking.
3.3 Competition Rules
In order to increase educational effect, it is desirable that teams achieve learning goal in a competitive way. We have tested the speedrun type competition at a maze in the past. In this year, although the speedrun type competition seems to be effective, we designed a more competitive game to increase educational effects.
Fig. 4 shows the competition field. The field consists of the three elements of the straight running field, the can scattered field, and the seaweed forest field. The wide variety of the tasks prevent the teams from optimizing their robots in a uniform way. Although optimization to a single goal makes it easier to evaluate the result, it makes it difficult for the teams to learn by self-effort. Furthermore, the skill of the operator will have more weight than the quality of customization, in such situations.
The teams operate the ROV and compete the number of cans they have collected in 5minutes. The cans are placed at the two fields: can scattered field and seaweed forest field. The seaweed forest field is more challenging, and it has higher points for collecting the cans.
• Straight Running Field
Three gates, consisting of two poles, are arranged in a line. Teams can get points by going through each gate. The aim of this field is to evaluate the straight running stability of the robot, which is one of the most fundamental and important characteristics of underwater robots.
• Can Scattered Field
The cans are widely placed at the field. The number of the cans is the same as the seaweed forest field, but their density is half. As the field is far from the start position, and cans are widely distributed, speed of the ROV is more important than controllability, to collect cans at this field.
• Seaweed Forest Field
The field has seaweed like structures made by PP tape and a metal net. PP tape has positive buoyancy and stands upright as shown in Fig.5. It resists when the robot intrudes. By adjusting the density of seaweed, the robot can only approach from the horizontal direction. Compared with the can scattered field, more control accuracy is required. The score for the cans collected at this field is twice as high as it at the can scattered field.
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3.4 Results
The competition took place in three days. In 2018, there were 14 teams from all around Japan, consisting of 4 junior high schools, 8 senior high schools, and 2 technical college. The number of participation teams increased about twice as compared with last year.
The first day was spent for customizing their robots. We helped the teams but avoided showing a direct solution. Instead, we told the teams about FBD (Free Body Diagram) so that they can voluntarily understand the importance of the force balance.
In the second day, we provided a review on the rules and schedule explained in the forum beforehand and made safety education. After that, the teams customized their robots like the first day. Some teams developed tools not to be mounted on their robots, but to support operations such as underwater glasses to check the position of the ROV.
The tournament was held in the third day. As a result, all the teams succeeded in going through all the gates. Many teams challenged the seaweed forest field, and only one team succeeded in collecting cans there. Keio A team (by Keio Shonan Fujisawa Junior & Senior High School) won first prize this year (in 2018 at left, Fig. 6).
As an exhibition match after all games, we held a game with all the teams without the restrict rules (Fig. 7). By announcing about the exhibition in advance, teams lost in an early stage further customized their robots. All the teams succeeded in scoring at the exhibition match.
We conducted a questionnaire to the teams after the event and confirmed that they are satisfied with the competition and the difficulty level of the kit. For example, the difficulty of the kit was evaluated as hard as 2.4/5 on average. The number of people who answered “difficult” has increased from last year. On the other hand, the enjoyment of the tournament is 4.3/5 on average. It can be said that participants enjoyed the competition. From the answers of these questions, it seems that the participants enjoyed the difficult tasks.
3.5 Trends of the Teams
In this section, we discuss about participating teams’ understanding of statics and technical aspects from the trend about how the teams customized their ROVs in recent three years. There are three teams participated every year. They improved technical level through continuous participation. For example, cameras were adopted by 35% of the teams in 2018, which only 1 team adopted in 2017. Therefore, the teams who participated in 2018 seem to have studied the ROVs developed in 2017 and 2016.
In 2018, a team attached a rotating arm to their robot as shown in 2016 at left, Fig.6. This ROV ran at the bottom of the pool and collected cans by the arm. In order to realize this behavior, the team adjusted the buoyancy of the ROV. The team seems to have understood that the relationship between buoyancy and center of gravity is important. It seems that this customization was made based on the experience in last years shared among the teams.
In early years, there were some customization that lacked consideration of statics, such as attaching a large net as shown in Fig. 6 (in 2016 at left). However, we observed the teams explaining the reasons for the failure, presenting a new customization plan, and observing its results. For example, the robot in Fig 6 (in 2016 at left) can catch a can at near the center of gravity of the robot using the catcher with a magnet. Furthermore, this customization does not degrade mobility of the robot so much.
As only steel cans were used in 2016, catchers using magnets were mainly used. Since 2017, aluminum cans have also been placed. This made some teams to develop robots with a net and robots with combination of net and magnets. Also, bonus points by shooting crab models placed on the floor of the pool contributed to the appearance of a robot with cameras as shown in Fig. 6 (2017 at left and 2018).
4. Conclusions
Underwater Robot Convention in JAMSTEC 2018 ended successfully. Teams increased in these three years. Through the recent three years, diversity of the robots in the free class has been increased, owing to the improvements of ready-made products. Also, in the junior class, the quality of the robots has been gradually improved, and there is a team that graduated from junior and participated in the free class. We are very glad about that.
We will continue to help people leaning through the experience on underwater robotics.
Acknowledgments
The Underwater Robot Convention in JAMSTEC in 2018 was supported by the IEEE/OES Japan Chapter, MTS Japan Section, Techno-ocean network, JAMSTEC, The Japan Society of Naval Architects and Ocean Engineers, and NPO Japan Underwater Robot Network. We would like to express our sincere appreciation to the sponsors for their strong support and cooperation in realizing this competition.
Suleman Mazhar has been working as a professor in Information & Communication Engineering at Harbin Engineering University (China) since July 2019. He did PhD from Tokyo University (Japan) and postdoctorate from Georgetown University (Washington DC, USA). He had BS-CS from FAST-NUCES (Lahore) and MS from GIK Institute (Pakistan). He is TYSP young scientist fellow (Ministry of Science & Technology China) and have won several research grants from international organizations such as DAAD (Germany), ICIMOD (Nepal), NRPU (Higher Education Commission Pakistan), WWF (Worldwide Fund for Nature) Pakistan. His research focus is deep learning and signal processing applications for environmental monitoring, with particular focus on underwater acoustics, and marine mammal conservation. He is a reviewer for professional journals such as Journal of Acoustical Society (America), IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, IEEE Sensors Journal, Applied Acoustics, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.
Peng Ren is a full professor with the College of Oceanography and Space Informatics, China University of Petroleum (East China). He is the director of Qingdao International Research Center for Intelligent Forecast and Detection of Oceanic Catastrophes. He received the K. M. Scott Prize from the University of York, the Natural Science award (first rank) from China Institute of Electronics, and the Eduardo Caianiello Best Student Paper Award from 18th International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing as one co-author. He has served as an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.
Mohd Rizal Arshad is a full professor at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Malaysia, where he specializes in ocean robotics technology and intelligent system. He received his B.Eng. in Medical Electronics & Instrumentation and PhD in Electronic Engineering from University of Liverpool, UK in 1994 and 1999, respectively. He completed his MSc. in Electronic Control Engineering from the University of Salford, UK in Dec 1995. He has supervised many postgraduate students and published extensively in local and international publications. He is a senior member of the IEEE, and was awarded IEEE OES Presidential Award in 2019.
Itzik Klein is an Assistant Professor, heading the Autonomous Navigation and Sensor Fusion Lab, at the Charney School of Marine Sciences, Hatter Department of Marine Technologies, University of Haifa. He is an IEEE Senior Member and a member of the IEEE Journal of Indoor and Seamless Positioning and Navigation (J-ISPIN) Editorial Board. Prior to joining the University of Haifa, he worked at leading companies in Israel on navigation topics for more than 15 years. He has a wide range of experience in navigation systems and sensor fusion from both industry and academic perspectives. His research interests lie in the intersection of artificial intelligence with inertial sensing, sensor fusion, and autonomous underwater vehicles.
John R. Potter (IEEE M’94, SM’02, F’18) graduated in the previous century with a joint honours Mathematics and Physics Degree from Bristol and a PhD. in Glaciology and Oceanography from Cambridge, UK studying Antarctic ice mass balance, where he spent four consecutive summers. This work helped underscore the non-linear fragility of polar ice to climate change and led to him receiving the Polar Medal from Queen Elizabeth II in 1988.
Nick is a Visiting Fellow at the UK National Oceanographic Center, Southampton His nomination was endorsed by the Underwater Acoustics Technology Committee. He had worked as a Research Associate and Lecturer at University of Birmingham and has been working as a Research Scientist at the Applied Research Laboratory, University of Texas, Austin. He has also served as a Program Officer at the Office of Naval Research Global. He is a senior member of IEEE (OES) and a Fellow of Acoustical Society of America (ASA). Nick has also been serving as Assoc. Editor for IEEE JoE and JASA. He is widely acknowledged for his expertise are seabed acoustics, parametric array modeling, sonar beamformer, underwater signal processing.
Maurizio Migliaccio (M’91-SM’00-F’17) is Full professor of Electromagnetics at Università di Napoli Parthenope (Italy) and was Affiliated Full Professor at NOVA Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, FL (USA). He has been teaching Microwave Remote Sensing since 1994. He was visiting scientist at Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fur Lüft und Raumfahrt (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. He was member of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) scientific committee. He was member of the ASI CosmoSkyMed second generation panel. He was e-geos AdCom member. He was Italian delegate of the ESA PB-EO board. He was Member of South Africa Expert Review Panel for Space Exploration. He serves as reviewer for the UE, Italian Research Ministry (MIUR), NCST, Kazakhstan and Hong Kong Research board. He lectured in USA, Canada, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Germany, Spain, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Italy. He was Italian delegate at UE COST SMOS Mode Action. He is listed in the Italian Top Scientists. He is an IEEE Trans. Geoscience and Remote Sensing AE, International Journal of Remote Sensing AE, and was IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering AE Special Issue on Radar for Marine and Maritime Remote Sensing, IEEE JSTARS AE of the Special Issue on CosmoSKyMed, Member of the Indian Journal of Radio & Space Physics Editorial board. His main current scientific interests cover SAR sea oil slick and man-made target monitoring, remote sensing for marine and coastal applications, remote sensing for agriculture monitoring, polarimetry, inverse problems for resolution enhancement, reverberating chambers. He published about 160 peer-reviewed journal papers on remote sensing and applied electromagnetics.
He has developed various types of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and related application technologies including navigation methods, a new sensing method using a chemical sensor, precise seafloor mapping methods, a precise seabed positioning system with a resolution of a few centimeters, a new sensing system of the thickness of cobalt-rich crust; and more. He has shown, by using these technologies that AUVs are practicable and valuable tools for deep-sea exploration.
Donna Kocak has had an outstanding career in defense and scientific projects developing and applying solutions in subsea optics, imaging and robotics. She graduated with an M.Sc in Computer Science in 1997 from the University of Central Florida; an MBA in 2008 from the University of Florida; and M.Sc in Industrial Engineering in 2011 from the University of Central Florida. She is currently a Senior Scientist, Advanced Concepts Engineering, and Fellow at the Harris Corporation in Melbourne, Florida, where she has developed novel optical imaging and communication solutions for under-sea defense and scientific projects. Prior to 2008 Donna Kocak was Founder and President of Green Sky Imaging, LLC (GSI) who developed laser/video photogrammetry software for underwater inspection and survey. Her earlier career positions were with Naval Training Systems Center, Florida; Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, Florida; eMerge Interactive; and the Advanced Technologies Group in Florida.
John Potter has a Joint Honours degree in Mathematics and Physics from Bristol University in the UK and a PhD in Glaciology and Oceanography from the University of Cambridge on research in the Antarctic, for which he was awarded the Polar Medal in 1988. John has worked on polar oceanography, underwater acoustics, ambient noise (including imaging), marine mammals, communications, IoUT, autonomous vehicles and strategic development. He has 40 years’ international experience working at the British Antarctic Survey in the UK, NATO in Italy, SIO in California, NUS in Singapore and most recently at NTNU in Norway. John is a Fellow of the IEEE and MTS, an Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, IEEE OES Distinguished Lecturer, PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer & an International Fellow of the Explorer’s Club.
Dr. James V. Candy is the Chief Scientist for Engineering and former Director of the Center for Advanced Signal & Image Sciences at the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Candy received a commission in the USAF in 1967 and was a Systems Engineer/Test Director from 1967 to 1971. He has been a Researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since 1976 holding various positions including that of Project Engineer for Signal Processing and Thrust Area Leader for Signal and Control Engineering. Educationally, he received his B.S.E.E. degree from the University of Cincinnati and his M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is a registered Control System Engineer in the state of California. He has been an Adjunct Professor at San Francisco State University, University of Santa Clara, and UC Berkeley, Extension teaching graduate courses in signal and image processing. He is an Adjunct Full-Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Candy is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and elected as a Life Member (Fellow) at the University of Cambridge (Clare Hall College). He is a member of Eta Kappa Nu and Phi Kappa Phi honorary societies. He was elected as a Distinguished Alumnus by the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Candy received the IEEE Distinguished Technical Achievement Award for the “development of model-based signal processing in ocean acoustics.” Dr. Candy was selected as a IEEE Distinguished Lecturer for oceanic signal processing as well as presenting an IEEE tutorial on advanced signal processing available through their video website courses. He was nominated for the prestigious Edward Teller Fellowship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Candy was awarded the Interdisciplinary Helmholtz-Rayleigh Silver Medal in Signal Processing/Underwater Acoustics by the Acoustical Society of America for his technical contributions. He has published over 225 journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports as well as written three texts in signal processing, “Signal Processing: the Model-Based Approach,” (McGraw-Hill, 1986), “Signal Processing: the Modern Approach,” (McGraw-Hill, 1988), “Model-Based Signal Processing,” (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2006) and “Bayesian Signal Processing: Classical, Modern and Particle Filtering” (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2009). He was the General Chairman of the inaugural 2006 IEEE Nonlinear Statistical Signal Processing Workshop held at the Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge. He has presented a variety of short courses and tutorials sponsored by the IEEE and ASA in Applied Signal Processing, Spectral Estimation, Advanced Digital Signal Processing, Applied Model-Based Signal Processing, Applied Acoustical Signal Processing, Model-Based Ocean Acoustic Signal Processing and Bayesian Signal Processing for IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society/ASA. He has also presented short courses in Applied Model-Based Signal Processing for the SPIE Optical Society. He is currently the IEEE Chair of the Technical Committee on “Sonar Signal and Image Processing” and was the Chair of the ASA Technical Committee on “Signal Processing in Acoustics” as well as being an Associate Editor for Signal Processing of ASA (on-line JASAXL). He was recently nominated for the Vice Presidency of the ASA and elected as a member of the Administrative Committee of IEEE OES. His research interests include Bayesian estimation, identification, spatial estimation, signal and image processing, array signal processing, nonlinear signal processing, tomography, sonar/radar processing and biomedical applications.
Kenneth Foote is a Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from The George Washington University in 1968, and a Ph.D. in Physics from Brown University in 1973. He was an engineer at Raytheon Company, 1968-1974; postdoctoral scholar at Loughborough University of Technology, 1974-1975; research fellow and substitute lecturer at the University of Bergen, 1975-1981. He began working at the Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, in 1979; joined the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1999. His general area of expertise is in underwater sound scattering, with applications to the quantification of fish, other aquatic organisms, and physical scatterers in the water column and on the seafloor. In developing and transitioning acoustic methods and instruments to operations at sea, he has worked from 77°N to 55°S.
René Garello, professor at Télécom Bretagne, Fellow IEEE, co-leader of the TOMS (Traitements, Observations et Méthodes Statistiques) research team, in Pôle CID of the UMR CNRS 3192 Lab-STICC.
Professor Mal Heron is Adjunct Professor in the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, and is CEO of Portmap Remote Ocean Sensing Pty Ltd. His PhD work in Auckland, New Zealand, was on radio-wave probing of the ionosphere, and that is reflected in his early ionospheric papers. He changed research fields to the scattering of HF radio waves from the ocean surface during the 1980s. Through the 1990s his research has broadened into oceanographic phenomena which can be studied by remote sensing, including HF radar and salinity mapping from airborne microwave radiometers . Throughout, there have been one-off papers where he has been involved in solving a problem in a cognate area like medical physics, and paleobiogeography. Occasionally, he has diverted into side-tracks like a burst of papers on the effect of bushfires on radio communications. His present project of the Australian Coastal Ocean Radar Network (ACORN) is about the development of new processing methods and applications of HF radar data to address oceanography problems. He is currently promoting the use of high resolution VHF ocean radars, based on the PortMap high resolution radar.
Hanu Singh graduated B.S. ECE and Computer Science (1989) from George Mason University and Ph.D. (1995) from MIT/Woods Hole.He led the development and commercialization of the Seabed AUV, nine of which are in operation at other universities and government laboratories around the world. He was technical lead for development and operations for Polar AUVs (Jaguar and Puma) and towed vehicles(Camper and Seasled), and the development and commercialization of the Jetyak ASVs, 18 of which are currently in use. He was involved in the development of UAS for polar and oceanographic applications, and high resolution multi-sensor acoustic and optical mapping with underwater vehicles on over 55 oceanographic cruises in support of physical oceanography, marine archaeology, biology, fisheries, coral reef studies, geology and geophysics and sea-ice studies. He is an accomplished Research Student advisor and has made strong collaborations across the US (including at MIT, SIO, Stanford, Columbia LDEO) and internationally including in the UK, Australia, Canada, Korea, Taiwan, China, Japan, India, Sweden and Norway. Hanu Singh is currently Chair of the IEEE Ocean Engineering Technology Committee on Autonomous Marine Systems with responsibilities that include organizing the biennial IEEE AUV Conference, 2008 onwards. Associate Editor, IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, 2007-2011. Associate editor, Journal of Field Robotics 2012 onwards.
Milica Stojanovic graduated from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, in 1988, and received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Northeastern University in Boston, in 1991 and 1993. She was a Principal Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 2008 joined Northeastern University, where she is currently a Professor of electrical and computer engineering. She is also a Guest Investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Milica’s research interests include digital communications theory, statistical signal processing and wireless networks, and their applications to underwater acoustic systems. She has made pioneering contributions to underwater acoustic communications, and her work has been widely cited. She is a Fellow of the IEEE, and serves as an Associate Editor for its Journal of Oceanic Engineering (and in the past for Transactions on Signal Processing and Transactions on Vehicular Technology). She also serves on the Advisory Board of the IEEE Communication Letters, and chairs the IEEE Ocean Engineering Society’s Technical Committee for Underwater Communication, Navigation and Positioning. Milica is the recipient of the 2015 IEEE/OES Distinguished Technical Achievement Award.
Dr. Paul C. Hines was born and raised in Glace Bay, Cape Breton. From 1977-1981 he attended Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, graduating with a B.Sc. (Hon) in Engineering-Physics.