Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), a Xerox company, has been awarded a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant for the next phase of development of Ocean of Things, a project that advances oceanographic research.
The Ocean of Things project, launched by DARPA in 2017, deploys drifters in the Southern California Bight and the Gulf of Mexico to collect data on the environment and human impacts. This includes sea surface temperature, sea state, sea surface activity and information about the marine life in the area.
"Oceans cover more than 70 percent of the Earth's surface and yet we know very little about them," comments Ersin Uzun, Vice President and General Manager of the IoT team at Xerox. "The drifters collect data that we were previously unable to collect, providing us with a continuous, up-to-date picture of the ocean situation."
Each solar-powered drifter has around 20 built-in sensors, including a camera, GPS, microphone, hydrophone and accelerometer. The various sensors can provide data on a wide range of areas, including marine pollution, aquafarming and maritime transportation routes.
PARC used its more than fifty years of experience in developing industry-leading technologies to design a drifter that best met the DARPA requirements for the program. Among other things, the drifter needed to be made of environmentally safe materials, be able to last a year or more in harsh maritime conditions before eventually sinking safely, and use advanced analytics to process and share the data collected.
In the first phase of the project, PARC produced 1,500 drifters, with up to 10,000 more compact and cost-effective drifters to follow in the second phase. The data obtained in this phase will be used to further optimize the final model. Once finalized, DARPA expects that large quantities of these drifters will be available to provide continuous information and a better understanding of oceans and seas that is still lacking today.
