NASA, U.S. Navy and university researchers have successfully demonstrated the first robotic underwater vehicle to be powered entirely by the natural temperature differences found in varying depths of the ocean.
The new technology, found on an undersea robot called the Sounding Oceanographic Lagrangrian Observer Thermal RECharging (SOLO-TREC), is scalable for use on most other robotic oceanographic vehicles, NASA said.
The energy-reaping technology could usher in a new generation of autonomous underwater vehicles capable of virtually indefinite ocean monitoring for climate and marine animal studies, exploration and surveillance.
The performance of underwater robotic vehicles has traditionally been limited by power considerations. SOLO-TREC, with its novel thermal recharging engine, might offer a way around this problem.
"People have long dreamed of a machine that produces more energy than it consumes and runs indefinitely," Jack Jones, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) principal engineer in Pasadena, Calif. and SOLO-TREC co-principal investigator, said in a statement.
"While not a true perpetual motion machine, since we actually consume some environmental energy, the prototype system demonstrated by JPL and its partners can continuously monitor the ocean without a limit on its lifetime imposed by energy supply," Jones said.
The 183-pound (84-kilogram) SOLO-TREC prototype was tested and deployed by a joint JPL and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego team on Nov. 30, 2009, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) southwest of Honolulu, Hawaii. The three-month test wrapped up last month.
no time. :(
No comments:
Post a Comment