In case you haven’t heard, there was a big earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand a couple of days ago. Friday’s earthquake measured 7.0, lasted up to 40 seconds, and caused immense damage. Fortunately nobody has been reported dead, in part because it hit early in the morning at 4:35 am. I’ll be in Christchurch in about 17 days and I’ll share more with you then about how this nation is dealing with the aftermath. Let’s hope everyone stays safe.
For today, I’d like to share more about underwater robots. I’d like to revisit the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) Ventana that MBARI uses in the amazing Monterey Bay and compare it to the ROV SCINI, which we’ll be using in the majestic Ross Sea in Antarctica.
What do you remember about Ventana from last week’s journal, “On Board with MBARI”?
What do you remember about SCINI from what we learned a few weeks ago, in our journal, "A Start to SCINI"?
How is SCINI different or the same as Ventana?
The ROV Ventana - What components can you see?
The ROV SCINI - What components do you see here?
Yes, Ventana is much bigger than SCINI. Ventana is a box that’s about 6 feet by 8 feet by 8 feet while SCINI is a five-foot cylinder about 6 inches in diameter.
Yes, Ventana, having the backing of MBARI, is much more expensive than SCINI, which was created with the limited funding of grants.
And yes, Ventana gets launched off a boat in the relatively warm waters of the Monterey Bay while SCINI gets launched through a small hole drilled in the ice in the chilly waters of Antarctica.
Yes, both are used for ocean sciences, both have a control room of some sorts, and both are used by our engineer DJ.
Let’s investigate a little more of the specifics of what makes SCINI and Ventana work and then we’ll look at some of the history and accomplishments of SCINI. Let’s start with what we just learned in our last journal about the 5 components to all ROVs.
Do you remember what those are?
If you listed a tether, a floatation device of some sort, ballast, thrusters, cameras and lights, you are right on! So let’s look at those components and compare Ventana and SCINI.
While Ventana’s tether is 2,100 meters (6890 feet) long, SCINI’s tether is only about 300 meters (1000 feet). Thus, Ventana can go much further. For flotation Ventana uses miniscule glass beads emersed in an epoxy slurry, while SCINI uses a special, dense foam that you can buy at an online hardware store.
Something that makes SCINI special is that she has 5, not 3 thrusters. SCINI can do more than just move forward or backward, up or down, to the left or to the right. The additional thrusters can tilt her up or down and diagonally to the left or diagonally to the right. Two thrusters, instead of one, placed vertically on SCINI can both be turned on which will make her fly either up or down or when they’re operated in reverse directions, it causes the vehicle to tilt up or down at an angle. Also two thrusters on the sides of SCINI can both be turned on to make her fly to one side or another, or can be turned on in different directions to allow heading. Instead of a helicopter, she’s like a missile. DJ says that SCINI is actually difficult for him to transition to fly because he’s used to flying larger ROVs and because of the added challenge of controlling the additional degree of freedom that SCINI has over other ROVs.
The control room for Ventana
The control room for SCINI
SCINI, unlike Ventana with her 1 big HD camera and 9 smaller cameras, only has 2 cameras, one of which is a forward looking camera and one of which is a downward looking HD camera.
Her lights, also unlike Ventana with her $20,000 lights whose light bulbs cost $1000, has an array of LED lights around her main camera, which only cost a few hundred dollars.
In addition to these main components, both ROVs also have navigational systems. We’ll explore those in much more detail later.
Furthermore, Ventana is unique in that she has a tool sled that gets attached to the bottom of her. Scientists get to choose what combination of arms, drawers, and tools they would like Ventana to carry for their science mission. SCINI, however, is much too small for such a tool sled. This year, she is getting a grabber though! While the grabber does not have the 7 degrees of movement that a work class ROV like Ventana has, it does have the capability to grasp and carry organisms or equipment.
Launching Ventana with a crane and a belly pack off the boat, The Point Lobos.
Launching SCINI through a hole in a hut on the ice
So both ROVs have an array of components and tools which help the ROV pilots fly the underwater robots in vastly different environments and which enable the ROV pilots to help the scientists research organisms in all parts of the ocean. So how were these invaluable underwater robots made? Where did the ROVs come from? Specifically, who came up with SCINI and how?
We learned that Ventana is 22 years old and she came from a big company in Canada, but what about SCINI?
Actually, like many great ideas, SCINI was born in the back yard – in a hot tub to be precise – about 4 years ago. Stacy, our project manager and lead oxette, happened to be relaxing with Bob, one of our chief engineers discussing research in Antarctica. According to Bob, they were talking about plans to drill a hole in the ice shelf and how nice it would be to put a camera on a wire down the hole. Then that turned into a drop camera with one thruster that would simply drive around in a circle. "You could make the circle bigger or smaller by increasing and decreasing the length of the tether." Then that morphed into “ROSCam”, a 4 inch sewer pipe with 3 thrusters, a tether, and a camera. This contraption had disposable motors that would run for 20 minutes and a cheap video camera. There were no lights and for flotation, glass bottles were used. It was built to investigate the stability and fly-ability of a torpedo or missle shaped ROV and prove "to Stacy" that we could launch and recover through a 5" hole. It was a complete success according to Bob.
After this, Bob, Stacy, and our engineer, DJ, wrote a proposal to turn this “proof of concept” into a usable tool for science in ice-covered regions. The NSF funded this project for three years, which enabled SCINI, like Ventana, to accomplish many things and which led up to the current rendition of SCINI. In 2007, SCINI was used to help Stacy and her team find “The Lost Experiments” in Antarctica, a set of recruitment, colonization and predation experiments that were started in the early 1960’s, by the very same Dr. Paul Dayton that’s going down with us this year. In 2008, SCINI was used to shoot high quality video of depths of up to 300 meters in Antarctica. In 2009, SCINI was used to create maps of the seafloor around McMurdo.
Since the beginning of SCINI, even without a large budget, Bob and DJ and their team of engineers have had to figure out many problems to make SCINI what she is today. Bob says that she is a success as they “have built her so if something happens, we can repair her in the field in under 15 minutes”. “But,” he adds, “there’s always more that they can do.” This year, DJ and Bob have been busy putting the grabber on SCINI, replacing SCINI’s navigational system, rebuilding an underwater sonar, and trouble-shooting the myriads of problems, complications, and updates required before we deploy.
Ventana in the Monterey Bay
SCINI going down a hole in the ice in the Ross Sea
This year, she will be helping us locate the cages and plates that Paul placed on the seafloor 47 years ago. We hope that she will aid us successfully and that if something happens that our talented group of engineers could find a way to fix her quickly and effectively.
SCINI seems pretty special to me so I asked both Bob and DJ, the “inventors” of SCINI, what they think is most special about SCINI.
Bob replied, “This is not going to be what you expect. I feel that the most unique thing about SCINI is the attitude we adhered to in the design and construction phases. My experiences with so many failed and poorly designed polar technology projects steered the design more than anything else.” His goal was “mainly being SIMPLE, off the shelf whenever possible. Most parts of SCINI can be bought at the hardware store. You could build your own SCINI for not that much money, maybe $25,000." Bob continued and stated, “hammer flat all designs and concepts so there are no surprises” and you can have “field repair-ability in under 15 minutes”. Lastly, he wanted to “have the most amount of fun doing this.” It sounds like they’ve all had a lot of fun!
DJ said, “SCINI is unique because it can go under the ice in a quick period of time with not very much gear and she runs off a generator. You can basically fill up a small pick up truck, that’s how much gear and it takes, and if everything goes right, you can get video of the ocean bottom in an ice-covered arctic region. That to me is what’s so unique!”
So, what do you think? Isn’t SCINI pretty amazing? What could you build in your backyard that might one day help scientists understand our world a little bit better?
SCINI flying in the Ross Sea in Antarctica