Review of research carried out and not carried out for Protei - April 2011 to April 2013.docx

Welcome!This document outlines the research work carried out by students under the supervision of their professors and Protei academic coordinator Etienne Gernez for the period April 2011 (Protei goes live) to April 2013 (Protei comes back from a world wide tour). The objectives are: to have an outline of what has been done and not done during this period to summarize the research efforts in terms of application for students and for funding

ContentsMapping Protei Research topicsTechnology: what does it take to deliver an autonomous, articulated sailing drone?Naval architecture: hull, sails and appendageMechanical engineering: articulation mechanism and materialElectrical engineering: energy, controlLifecycleApplications: what does it take to make this drone carry out ocean monitoring and cleaning missions?Sensors and payloadCommunicationDeployment and recoveryLegal aspects of interventionTechnology qualificationBusiness model: what does it take to unfold the vision of a community of users/developers working with a hybrid for profit/non profit business model?Web developmentEducationCommunity development and managementOpen hardware intellectual propertyResearch proposals and application for fundingResearch proposalsApplications for fundingCite and use this work

Mapping Protei Research topicsProtei research topics are broken down as follows. Each section shows research carried out by students, internally by the Protei community, or highlights the lack of research for that topic.

1. Technology: what does it take to deliver an autonomous, articulated sailing drone? Naval architecture: hull, sails and appendage Mechanical engineering: articulation mechanism and material Electrical engineering: energy, control2. Applications: what does it take to make this drone carry out ocean monitoring and cleaning missions? Sensors and payload Communication Deployment and recovery Legal aspects of intervention3. Business model: what does it take to unfold the vision of a community of users/developers working with a hybrid for profit/non profit business model? Web development Community management Open hardware intellectual property Strategy, marketing and admin

Technology: what does it take to deliver an autonomous, articulated sailing drone?Naval architecture: hull, sails and appendageA velocity program prediction for calculating the main dimensions of the hull, sails and appendage of Protei 6.0 was developed by Associate Prof. Gonzalo Tampier and his student Javier Henrquez Quezada, Universidad Austral de Chile, with many thanks for the support from Solidworks and Futureship.[no report available]

A remote controlled trimaran was designed and built by Sina Kazemi from TU/e Eindhoven, in collaboration with the local DiY Drones community in Rotterdam. Prior to that, Sina and another student published a very simple design for a pocket sailing boat on Instructables which got up to 10 000 views.Organic design by Sina Kazemi

Nico Van der Kolk, masters student at TU/e Delft is starting his masters research in Spring 2013 on how to model an articulated sailing vessel and how to compare its manoeuvring capability to a rigid hull sailing vessel. Results expected for Christmas 2013.[research proposal to be uploaded shortly]Mechanical engineering: articulation mechanism and materialMagda King from University Technology Sydney, under the supervision of Prof. Zenon Chaczko is doing her Phd on smart materials, and as such has been looking into butterfly wings as inspiration for Protei sails.[contact Marta King: mking@csr.com.au]

In addition, extensive exploration of articulation systems and material has been carried out by the Protei community through the prototypes 1 to 10 - please see Protei website.Electrical engineering: energy, controlRik Bootsman from TU/e Eindhoven made an early attempt to develop a platform for autonomous sailing - as well as designing, building and testing a windsensor, see next section.Autonomous sailing by Rik Bootsman

Energy budget has been investigated by the Protei community for different designs - see Protei website.

An Artifical Intelligence and Control group has been formed to discuss these issues, consisting of Gabriella Levine (Protei), Peter Keen (Protei), Prof Zenon Chaczko (UTS Sydney), Prof Jerome Jouffroy (University of South Denmark), Dr Alex Philipps (Southampton University). Prof Chaczko put together a vision for the sensor distribution and control on Protei based on biomimicry, which he is currently using as a teaching and experimentation basis with his students at UTS Sydney.Bio-inspired, Autonomic Model of System Architecture for Protei

Lifecycle considerationsThe Protei Wild Robots, a group of 10 students from TU/e Eindhoven, NextNature Program, put together a very interesting vision of the lifecycle of Protei, a kind of birth, life and death requirements to develop a community of sailing robots living in the ocean.Research notes: Protei Species

Applications: what does it take to make this drone carry out ocean monitoring and cleaning missions?Sensors and payloadTU/e Delft students Inge Kamp, Niels Kleijweg, Arthur Schout and Jon Tromp carried out experiments in Delfts university towing tank to measure the drag force of an oil boom saturated with oil, in order to find out how long a boom can be towed at 2 knots by Protei 6.0 (3m long vessel)Measurement of the resistance of an oil boom (mini paper, in Dutch)

Paris X Tech Mines student Franois de la Taste carried out different tests of oil boom absorption, finding out how much oil can be absorbed once, and how many times can an oil boom be re-used. Franois had access to a new type of material based on clay, developed by the company Aeroclay (results protected under an NDA). His experimental set up is available on Protei website, and the results are compiled in the spreadsheet below.Oil sorbent boom results

Rik Bootsman from TU/e Eindhoven designed, built and tested a wind sensor, giving the apparent wind speed and direction for less than 10 USD.Autonomous sailing by Rik Bootsman

Protei community installed a GPS on Protei 6.0, as well as using radioactivity sensors (DiY geiger) on Protei 10.X, please see Protei website.CommunicationTim Huiberts from TU/e Eindhoven worked with acoustic and infrared communication and positioning for swarm operation.Foundations for swarm behaviour of autonomous sailing drones

Protei community looked at different communication protocols and hardware (GPRS, Wifi, Iridium) while developing Protei 6.0, see Protei website.Deployment and recoveryPaul Staal and Roel Smeets from TU/e Eindhoven researched animal hunting patterns to inform a collaborative swarm behavior, differentiating tasks for scouting (for oil spills) and attack (surrounding oil spills). Hierarchy of Protei by Paul Staal and Roel Smeets

Pieter Bron from TU/e Eindhoven developed a simple swarm model to study the interaction of different elements of the swarm.Genus by Pieter Bron

Tim Huiberts from TU/e Eindhoven looked also into swarm behaviour (which proved to be a very popular topic for students!) with his acoustic and infrared communication system. Foundations for swarm behaviour of autonomous sailing drones

Practical aspects of launching and recovery of a sailing robot were investigated by the Protei community from with prototypes 1 to 10.X, with constant challenges in manipulating the prototypes, putting them in and out the water, packing them to send them around the world in exhibitions, see Protei website.Legal aspects of interventionThis topic was not covered directly.The robotic sailing community competing for the Microtransat has had discussions with several authorities (US Coast Guards, International Maritime Organization,+) leading to different interpretation of what is the definition of a surface autonomous vehicle, and from what size & weight does it become a risk to the users of the sea. [contact Prof. Paul Miller phmiller@usna.edu]

Patrizia Scalas did a voluntary research on the the integration of new technology for marine oil spill clean-up in contingency planning and response. Her list of reference document and information request are published as is below. The key learning here is from Skip Przelomski, Senior Technical Advisor, Clean Caribbean & Americas: PatriziaThank you for the link to the Protei Project in your email. The concept is definitely unique, however, the actual real world application during an oil spill incident will be difficult. The towing of sorbent boom orsweeps through an oil sheen is usually a final polishing operation not a primary response tool to a major oil slick.Information requestReference documents

Technology qualificationFranois de la Taste from Paris X Tech Mines started to work on a qualification of new technology procedure for Protei as an Oil recovery system based on DNV standard for Qualification of New Technology.Internship report (in French)Draft report for Qualification Basis

Business model: what does it take to unfold the vision of a community of users/developers working with a hybrid for profit/non profit business model?Web developmentWillem Rabsztyn from TU/e Eindhoven developed a prototype for a community website showing the Protei units at sea, which areas should be targeted and how to collaboratively build and send a Protei unit to a targeted area, see the prototype of the community web platform here.A community web platform for Protei

Protei website is based on Googlesites, and gave good results in terms of documentation and publishing, not so much in terms of real time collaboration. Another attempt was made using a Drupal website for the evolution of the Protei community into the Open-h2o community. The Drupal solution proved very complex to use for both documentation and collaboration. Recent contacts have been made with Bram Geenen who is developing the Wewolve platform and offered Protei community to be beta testers. EducationMartijn Lammers and Stijn van Iersel from TU/e Eindhoven built a kit consisting of a remote controlled mast&boom and rudder which can be fitted on almost any small floating vessel. They tried the kit with several groups of kids of different ages to lower the entry requirements for building a remote controlled vessel and sparked the imagination for creative re-use of material in building small sailing vessels. Resailing by Martijn Lammers and Stijn van Iersel

Etienne Gernez, Cesar Minoru Harada, Rik Bootsman, Zenon Chaczko, Gabriella Levine, and Peter Keen wrote the collective paper Protei open source sailing drones: A platform for education in ocean exploration and conservation, presented at the International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training (ITHET) the 21-23 June 2012, in Istanbul, Turkey, by Etienne Gernez.This paper presents the tools and learning environments used during the development of Protei, and the opportunities created in terms of education and engagement of the Public, Scientific and Industrial sectors. Three case studies are presented, concluding with the challenges and education perspectives lying in the growth of the Open-H2O community. See the paper on IEEE.org, available on request to Etienne Gernez

Community development and managementElika Madhavi and Chun Kai Phang from the Global Entrepreneurship and Marketing Program, Stanford University produced an analysis of the potential of Protei as an education toy, looking at the potential target customers, communication channels and collaboration opportunities with schools in California, with a ready-to-unroll action plan.Final report

Allen Jiang, Congyi Tan, Swetha Bolagond, Ken Bach Ngoc Thanh Cong, from the Global Entrepreneurship and Marketing Program, Stanford University, analysed the potential customers for Protei as a research platform for oceanographers and grad students, as well as designing a market place and a communication strategy to attract potential customers.Final report and video presentation

Sina Kazemi from TU/e Eindhoven produced an Open call for building autonomous sailing robots on the DiYDrones and Instructables communities. Other potential groups dealing with open source hardware and related to the ocean are numerous (San Francisco Bay Area, Baja California, Brazil, Berlin, Ireland, Oslo,++) and often organized in small local communities with international exchanges through artist residencies and exhibitions. Cesar Harada, Gabriella Levine, Sebastian Mllauer, Kasia Molga and Etienne Gernez can all be contacted for more info.DiY Drones community Instructables

Chaczko, Z. Klempous, R. ; Nikodem, J. ; and Aslanzadeh, S wrote the collective paper Group-work teaching and learning involving 3 Time Zones (3TZ) model of collaboration in the global workspace presented at the International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training (ITHET), the 21-23 June 2012, in Istanbul, Turkey by Zenon Chaczko. Protei is cited as a case study and recommendations are made to implement this 3 time zone model inspired from software development companies working internationally. access the paper online Open hardware intellectual propertyNo work was carried by students but Cesar Harada has worked together with Andrew Katz, a lawyer based in the UK and specialist in open source intellectual property, on the definition of a license dedicated to Open Source Hardware for Marine Technology, based on the first license for Open source hardware technology, to which Cesar Harada and Gabriella Levine have contributed. Internally in the Protei community, there has been active discussions on the ownership and retribution of every members work, at the moment of the evolution of the Protei community into Protei INC. (for Profit, based in Hong Kong/Shenzen) and Open-h2o community (not for profit, registered in the US). These discussions have not been conclusive.Development of the Open-h2o license on Cesar Haradas blogWorking draft of the license on Google docsOpen Source Hardware (OSHW) Statement of Principles and Definition v1.0

Research proposals and application for fundingResearch outlined in this document has been carried out with very little resources. Only one student internship was funded (generously by DNV), the other students had to cover their own expenses. The work the academic supervisor was totally freelance, only the trip to the ITHET conference in Istanbul was funded (again generously by DNV).

The research for funding has not been specifically targeted and should be in the future. In order to achieve this, academic affiliation is critical, and the best would be an endorsement from recognized research institutions, particularly in oceanography and robotics. Research proposalsA few research proposals have been formalised and successfully attracted very good students:TU/e Eindhoven: ApplicationTU/e Delft (in Dutch, by Peter Naaijen): ApplicationGlobal Entrepreneurship and Marketing Program, Stanford University: Application

More research proposals have been drafted but not formalised. See Protei for the so called student project reserve, as well as a list of potential research questions in the Physics of sailing and topics in Control. All these documents are available in a dropbox folder, please free to reuse under CC-BY-SA license.Applications for fundingFunding has been granted to Protei from several sources, mostly private and by donation. Non exhaustive list of applications (so many attempts!):Tech Awards 2012 (not granted) [could not find the feedback letter - someone has it maybe?]Xprize Oilspill clean up challenge 2012 (not granted) Feedback letterEchoing green awards (not granted) Feedback letterMSTF & Schmidt Ocean expression of interest (not granted) Feedback letterSavannah Ocean Challenge (granted, 100 000 USD!) Feedback letterCite and use this workReview of research carried out and not carried out for Protei - April 2011 to April 2013Etienne Gernez 20130524 CC-BY-SA