Michael Krieg
University of Hawaii at Manoa, HI·Engineering
Much of the ocean's working world is hard for people to reach. Icebergs drift through polar seas, carrying freshwater, shaping ocean processes and threatening ships, subsea cables and pipelines.
- Fields
Engineering
Computer Science
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
marine robotics
autonomous underwater vehicle
autonomous surface vehicle
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Develop iceberg-referenced localization algorithms that track an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and drifting floats relative to an iceberg that is drifting and rotating, so robots can navigate a moving reference frame.
- Build an online coverage path planner, with a new inverse-sonar model and an information-based scoring rule, that guides an AUV around an iceberg at several depths to produce a complete 3D scan of its underwater portion.
- Design planners that steer an autonomous surface vehicle to keep reliable communication with the AUV and that choose float release times and places to maximize sensing coverage in uncertain ocean currents.
- Create a mixed reality interface for remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) that combines sensor data with fast water-force simulations, converts flow, pressure and temperature into touch feedback, and maps operator body motion into robot commands.
- Assess how the sensory-transfer interface, including its virtual training mode, affects subsea worker performance, safety and training needs, using psychometric, behavioral and human-factors methods with industry partners.
More about the research
Meanwhile, offshore industries rely on remotely operated robots that take years of training to pilot well. Both of this lab's projects ask how underwater robots can sense difficult environments better and share that information with people. One project builds a team of robots that maps icebergs. The other builds a control interface that lets operators "feel" what an undersea robot senses.
Why it matters
Iceberg maps could improve the models used to predict iceberg drift, melting and effects on ocean processes such as sea-level rise. They could also help protect ships, subsea cables and pipelines. Easier-to-use undersea robot controls could cut operator training time and open subsea jobs to more workers. Such jobs include inspecting offshore wind and tidal infrastructure, repairing coastal damage, monitoring aquaculture and search and rescue.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Carol Menassa
University of Michigan, MI·Engineering
Identify, through participatory design with an embedded cohort of wheelchair users, the factors that determine whether an end-to-end mobility system succeeds for people with physical disabilities.
Jingang Yi
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Engineering
Develop machine learning methods for real-time recognition of construction workers' activities and estimation of their body posture, using wearable sensors.
Robert Guy
University of California-Davis, CA·Mathematics & Statistics
Measure flow patterns and forces on dynamically similar remotely operated vehicles to test how metachronal rowing, a back-to-front wave of paddle strokes, generates thrust and lift across paddle Reynolds numbers from 0.01 to 10,000.
The school
University of Hawaii at Manoa: 23 labs on PI Pages, $376M a year on research, 182 research doctorates a year.
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