Cost‐Effective Environmental Monitoring of Offshore Wind Installations with Automated Marine Robotics

PI: Richard Camilli, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI)
Start Year: 2022 | Duration: 3 years
Partners: DOE, BOEM, WHOI, Australian Centre for Field Robotics, Marine Advanced Robotics

Project Abstract:

In May of 2021, the US federal government pledged to build 30,000 MW of offshore wind in the United States by 2030. Multiple ecological issues are common to fixed and floating offshore platforms throughout their anticipated life cycle. Among these are: avian collisions with rotors, marine mammal interaction, construction noise and disturbance, and direct impacts to fish and mammal habitats. However, understanding natural variability, and deconvolving this from potential harmful/beneficial indirect effects to species and habitats is difficult. Here, we seek to develop and demonstrate a next‐generation autonomous robotic technology for persistent environmental monitoring of potential deep‐sea wind installations on the US Pacific coast. This next‐generation system uses 3 classes of high‐endurance autonomous vehicles operating in coordination. The proposed robotic observation technology will be able to collect baseline data as well as provide understanding of changes to bathymetric/geologic structure, and marine communities, including invertebrates, fish, birds, and marine mammals. Our proposed architecture relies on the coordinated use of three principal classes of autonomous platforms: autonomous surface vessels (ASVs) developed by Marine Advanced Robotics (MAR); a next‐generation autonomous underwater glider (AUG) developed by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and autonomous benthic drifters (ABDs) developed by the University of Sydney’s Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR). These platforms, which minimize potential disturbance or injury to wildlife (particularly marine mammals and water fowl) will be equipped with a constellation of instrumentation, including: active and passive acoustic, optical, lidar, radar, and chemical sensors that enable persistent autonomous observation of marine habitats and species that may be impacted by the construction and operation of deep‐water wind installations. The proposed platform is transformational in that it focuses on minimizing ecological risk through an emphasis on advanced autonomy methods that limit environmental disturbance through highly efficient, unobtrusive observation, without the need for on‐site (human) marine crew. The unattended nature of these systems will expand opportunities for survey during storms and at night. In contrast to conventional environmental assessment using only passive data collection at fixed locations, the mobile and active sensing capability provided by our autonomy architecture will improve data quality and enable the vehicle platforms to operate as a coordinated system that is greater than the sum of its parts. The overall effect of our proposed technology is to increase environmental observability while lowering the cost of data collection, thereby improving actional information for offshore wind installation operators and regulatory agencies.