MSE wins funding for ANTS
Marine South East has been successful in winning funding through the National Oceanography Centre's 'Autonomous Technology Competition'.
Simple-minded robot vessels are increasingly being used to gather information on the oceans. The measurements they make add to our knowledge of how the seas work. For example, data gathered by these robots on horizontal and vertical currents help scientists to understand the distribution and growth of plankton, the food for fish and marine mammals. Such robots have also helped industry track the fate of oil spills undersea.
Looking to the future industry and scientists need sea-going robots to work in cleverer ways. The ANTS project will give these robots the ability to do more than follow simple tracks irrespective of the information contained in the measurements they are making. For now, much of the creative thinking will be done on-shore, and then communicated to the robots at sea.
The ANTS project is part of A Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) competition to develop software capable of controlling fleets of cutting edge autonomous marine robots. £1.5 million is being made available to UK businesses to develop the software which will enable fleets of autonomous marine robots to work together and to be controlled from a central point.
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