Automatic solvers for optimization problems in Ocean Technology and Design
The project is starting at the Department of Computer Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland, on using automatic solvers (in particular, SAT solvers) for autonomous underwater vehicles. At this time, we are looking for interested prospective graduate students. Please contact me at
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Brief project description (contact me for more details).
In Newfoundland, we have a lot of research and industry working on ocean technologies and other marine research. In particular, there are several groups developing autonomous underwater robots. In some respect, working under water is more challenging than even in space: the water does not allow much communication between the robot and the control centre, or even between robots; also, it is not possible to use a GPS under water to get a position. Therefore, planning a mission for underwater robots is fairly challenging: winds and currents can move a robot quite a distance without it not realizing that it's position has been changing.
In our project we are trying to use automated problem solvers (SAT solver, in particular), to do the overall planning for the missions, in particular, to optimize the route of the robot taking into account ocean currents, weather forecast and other factors. This information will be sent to the robot at the start of the mission. In the next stage of the project we need find out how to make fast adjustments to the plan whenever the robot surfaces and reports its coordinates.
Eventually, this would become a general mission planning system, with multiple robots and other constraints. There are many directions within the project and many ways to develop it further, so there is a lot of opportunity for research. We are collaborating on this project with engineers here in Newfoundland, as well as with researchers in other universities; potentially we would be collaborating with local industries as well.