In November 2021, I joined the science party onboard R/V Revelle RR2107 for a mission to Guaymas Basin, Gulf of California. We were looking to characterize hydrothermal vents in the Northern Basin, and use AUV Sentry to sniff out plume waters that rise above the vents. While we are still processing our results from the cruise, I'm happy to share some preliminary results presented at the Ocean Sciences Meeting (OSM) in February/March 2022!
With my colleague Genevieve Flaspohler, we've assembled some reflections about the open challenges in expeditionary robotics posed to the RLDM community. In particular, we discuss the challenges of representing uncertainty over partially-observed spatiotemporal dynamics, performing long-horizon rollouts for information gathering, and formulating robust heuristics. We will make our statement available following feedback from RLDM 2022 reviewers.
I have been advising two undergraduate projects -- one on enabling under-ice biogeochemical measurements with hobby-level remotely-operated underwater vehicles, and one on training high-fidelity surrogate models for hydrothermal plume phenomena. It has been a sincere pleasure working with these students as we conduct field operations, review papers, and execute on their designs.