Dr Y Petillot
Applications accepted all year round
Funded PhD Project (European/UK Students Only)
About the Project
The project aims to develop an autonomy architecture which tackles the generic problems surrounding monitoring oceanographic phenomena (mobile sensor networks sampling theory) and apply it to one (or more) oceanographic problems. The target applications will involve the deployment of surface and underwater vehicles, equipped with relevant sensors (chemical, biological) whose collective target is to detect and monitor a specific scientific event by adapting the sampling strategy of the network to provide the best possible model of the observed event. We expect the architecture to be fully decentralized (each platforms takes its own decision based on information provided by its neighbours) and its adaptive behaviours to be driven by a mixture of offline modeling of the phenomenon and on-line adaptation to live sensor data. The system will be developed in collaboration with SeeByte ltd who have been involved in an SBRI project with NOC on Adaptive Autonomous Ocean Sampling Networks and are interested in sponsoring a Case studentship to continue this line of research. The validation would be performed in Heriot-Watt university on the Oceans Systems Lab assets in the initial stages but would eventually be tested on a real scientific issue using the MARS fleet.
Two scientific applications are envisaged to guide the development: open ocean deep convection and spring phytoplankton blooms:
(1) Open ocean deep convection is a sporadic process where wintertime atmospheric cooling can make surface waters sufficiently dense to mix deeply (to 1000m or more). A field of convecting plumes is expected to be in a localized region of water---O(100km) across---surrounded by stratified water. The convective region is dotted with narrow mixing plumes (O(100m) across) where. A decentralized sampling system would enable near-real time mapping of the convective patch, where underwater vehicles could identify and characterize the boundary between convecting and stratified water, and higher resolution sampling within mixing plumes.
(2) Phytoplankton blooms occur in the springtime, and are characterized by “patchy” areas of high fluorescence or production, interspersed with areas of relatively weak production. An adaptive sampling network could be applied to find, and then characterize, the spatial scales of phytoplankton production at high resolution. In both cases (1) and (2), the underwater sampling can be enhanced by surface measurements including meteorological data (in the case of convection) and irradiance (in the case of production).
The NEXUSS CDT provides state-of-the-art, highly experiential training in the application and development of cutting-edge Smart and Autonomous Observing Systems for the environmental sciences, alongside comprehensive personal and professional development. There will be extensive opportunities for students to expand their multi-disciplinary outlook through interactions with a wide network of academic, research and industrial / government / policy partners. The student will be registered at Heriot-Watt University, and will share time between Heriot-Watt, SeeByte and the University of Southampton. The student will work in a multi-disciplinary team of engineers and scientists. The student will get exposure to the commercial world through its links and time spent at SeeByte ltd. He/She will also get a strong understanding of the embedded software required to smarten the current generation of autonomous systems and will be able to adapt them to new problems in the future.
Funding Notes
Each NEXUSS project comes with a fully funded studentship for UK students and EU students who meet the RCUK eligibility criteria.
To be eligible for a full award students must have settled status in the UK and no restrictions on how long they can stay and been 'ordinarily resident' in the UK for 3 years prior to the start of the grant. They must have been normally residing in the UK (apart from temporary absences) and not been residing in the UK wholly or mainly for the purpose of full-time education. (This does not apply to UK or EU nationals)