Dave, UR - 21st Century Collaboration

So, I just wrapped a six hour video conference with Matt, the Project Engineer for Phase One. Project Engineer? Phase One? What is this guy talking about?

Whiteboard madness: Hashing out basic design ideas with Matt

Last week, I spoke about the research challenges facing those of us in the scientific community that are trying to communicate with dolphins.

In order to collect more specific visual and auditory data on marine organisms, without disturbing their social interaction, we need to develop new equipment.  Some would call this a setback, but this team is excited.  The three of us are all young, professional researchers, and the opportunity to do a project that is entirely unique research is just...downright exciting.

So let's talk theory. As of right now, there are hydrophone arrays with 3 fixed hydrophones. They have large dish collectors behind the array to help gather sound. There are separate underwater video cameras with up to two hydrophones integrated. These tools, while great compared to what was available ten to twenty years ago, are not good enough to make significant progress in this research. What we are proposing as an end state, and subsequently developing in multiple phases, is a tri-hydrophone array with integrated video, and software-driven controls -- a device that will allow researchers to collect real-time video and audio on wild specimens at distance -- right down to the individual organism. With this, we will be able to capture the individual actions and noises of a specific dolphin, without collecting the the surrounding dolphins. This data, biased against general collection footage, will give researchers the ability to construct "conversations" that will give us more insight to the context of their interactions. That's the theory.

In order to make this happen while still accomplishing all our assigned schoolwork, we have broken development into multiple phases. This spring, our task is to research our optimal array design.  Instead of using one large collector dish behind the array as we have seen done with other arrays, Matt will be 3-D printing individual collector dishes for each hydrophone.  We opted for this change, so that we can use the variance in input strength between each hydrophone to triangulate a dolphin's position in the water. In the end product, this will allow the computer to "soft-lock" on every organism at a given distance, and then the researcher will use an external D-Pad on the outside of the device to select the organism they want to focus on. The hydrophones will then make slight angle adjustments via servo to stay zeroed on the organism. This is easier said than done, so this semester we are working on the array by itself.

The array radius for the first test collection will start at 18", with points of adjustment along the length of each strut, so that we can shorten or lengthen the struts to change the overall array diameter. We will be using 4 different collector cone dimensions for the first data collection: 0-degree as the control, 15-degree, 25-degree, and then a 90-degree cylinder as an experimental unidirectional concept. Across the pool, will be a "target board" with an underwater speaker, emitting a novel tone. There will 5 speaker positions on the board so that we can move the speaker from zero (center), through four quadrants, so that we can measure variance between hydrophones. Once we have the first collection as baseline data, we will do a second collection with interference noise. We are going to place a second underwater speaker at a 90-degree offset to the target line, and play assorted disturbance noise (boat motors, etc.) so that we can evaluate the collector dishes for their ability to cancel out irrelevant sound.  With the potential for massive equipment failures aside, we should be able to finish the semester with a firm array design, so that we can move into Phase II in the fall semester.

Matt and Dave at Matt's F.I.T. Commencement, Spring 2015

The team is meeting this weekend to hammer out exact equipment and material requirements, so that we can submit our purchase proposal this week. Additionally, we are going to sort out fine dimensions and then CAD the components, so that Matt can start 3-D printing the parts.  We will also discuss putting together a YouTube video, so that we can explain the project in more depth.  Fortunately, we have a full-sized whiteboard at our disposal. Next week, we will be sharing design specifics and CAD drawings, and failures aside, we should be in the water in a few weeks. Stick around, true believers!

PS: This team still needs a cool name, and we are open to crowd suggestions!