The AOP&E Department, to quote WHOI Honorary Trustee Robert Frosch, is living in “an expanding universe.” Our budget, staff, and diversity of projects are all increasing, despite rather lean economic times for research overall. This is a tribute to the energy, enthusiasm, and creativity of our scientific and engineering staff. Our department’s “strategic plan” for approaching scientific questions and human applications has not changed much over the years. We are constantly trying to develop the best instrumentation and analysis tools to make significant inroads on hard—and even previously unsolvable—problems. It is a blend of the hardworking, roll-up-your-shirtsleeves creativity of Thomas Edison’s workshop and the inspired visions of Jules Verne. When breakthrough technologies emerge, we want them to emerge in our labs. But while the approach and philosophy remain the same, the technology surely does not. Our latest generation of instruments, sensors, models, and other technologies were unthinkable even a few decades ago. It sounds like Verne or Asimov—autonomous robotic vehicles carrying mass spectrometers, ultra-sensitive digital imaging systems, and other laboratory-style equipment to places like a deep, mid-ocean ridge or under the ice of the Arctic Ocean—but much of it was science nonfiction in 2007. The Arctic Gakkel Vents Expedition—including AOP&E engineers Hanumant Singh, John Kemp, John Bailey, Clifford Pontbriand, and Mike Jakuba, and students Chris Murphy and Clayton Kunz—was a fine example of how autonomous vehicles are making their presence felt in polar science and other tough working environments. Underwater vehicles with advanced sensors also are being developed and used for marine archaeology, Navy surveillance, and mine-hunting missions; for tracking and listening to whales; and for chemical sensing of ocean vents, toxic wastes, and oil leaks. Vehicles are being built with longer endurance, the ability to switch between autonomous and remote-controlled operations, easily interchangeable payloads, and other schemes for deploying and recovering robots in any part of the ocean. While we all love our “techno-toys,” the scientific and societal applications of technology can be just as exciting, and indeed provides the rationale for new technology development. In 2007, AOP&E officially secured a role in the large scale, national Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). Slated as a multi-year, multi-institutional program, OOI will require development, construction, and deployment of significant new hardware. AOP&E, along with the WHOI Physical Oceanography Department, will play a central engineering role in the coastal and global components of OOI. Thanks to OOI and other initiatives, the AOP&E Department is growing—both its facilities and its mission. In 2007, the Mooring and Rigging group moved from the village of Woods Hole to a newly renovated facility in the Rinehart Coastal Research Laboratory on the Quissett Campus. The old Digital Buoy System lab, or DIBOS (a leftover name from an old ocean acoustics project), has been moved to Ocean Systems Laboratory, becoming the operational center for the REMUS family of vehicles. — James F. Lynch, Department Chair Last updated: October 9, 2009 | |||||||||||||||||||
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