Adaptive Sampling in the Ocean and Coordinated Mobile Sensor l

Francois Lekien, Spring Berman and Naomi Leonard

Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
Princeton University

The Autonomous Ocean Sampling Network (AOSN) project and the Adaptive Sampling and Prediction (ASAP) project both aim to coordinate the sampling effort of high-frequency radars, ships, airplanes, satellites, buoys and underwater vehicles for the purpose of improving observation, nowcasting and prediction of ocean processes. The first coordinated AOSN experiment was run in August 2003 in Monterey Bay, CA. Another experiment in Monterey Bay will be run as part of ASAP in August 2006.

The objective is to learn how to deploy, direct and utilize autonomous vehicles and other mobile sensing platforms most efficiently to sample the ocean, assimilate the data into numerical models in real or near-real time and predict the current and future state with minimal error.

The optimal strategy for the mobile sensors is viewed as the global minimizer of a synoptic metric. The presence of currents in the domain modifies the optimal trajectories of the least powered vehicles and the sampling strategy must be revised as new data and forecasts become available.

Last Update: March 30, 2005