The Amundsen Sea Polynya is characterized by large phytoplankton blooms, which makes this region disproportionately important relative to its size for the biogeochemistry of the Southern Ocean. In situ data on phytoplankton are limited, which is problematic given recent reports of sustained change in the Amundsen Sea. During two field expeditions to the Amundsen Sea during austral summer 2010–2...

Four wave-propelled autonomous vehicles (Wave Gliders) instrumented with a variety of oceanographic and meteorological sensors were launched from San Francisco, CA in November 2011 for a trans-Pacific (Pac-X) voyage to test platform endurance. Two arrived in Australia, one in Dec 2012 and one in February 2013, while the two destined for Japan both ran into technical difficulties and did not arr...

The existence of several periodic structures (known as gliders) in the evolution space of the one-dimensional cellular automaton Rule 110, has important lines of investigation in cellular automata theory such as: complex behavior, universal computation and self-reproduction. We investigate the types of gliders, their properties and production through collisions in Rule 110 and their representat...

The level set methodology for time-optimal path planning is employed to predict collision-free and fastest time trajectories for swarms of underwater vehicles deployed in the Philippine Archipelago region. To simulate the multiscale ocean flows in this complex region, a data-assimilative primitive-equation ocean modeling system is employed with telescoping domains that are interconnected by imp...

This paper describes an optimal sampling approach to support glider fleet operators and marine scientists during the complex task of planning the missions of fleets of underwater gliders. Optimal sampling, which has gained considerable attention in the last decade, consists in planning the paths of gliders to minimize a specific criterion pertinent to the phenomenon under investigation. Differe...

Call it the department chair’s dilemma: How do you get a swarm of independently minded minions moving in concert toward some useful goal? The problem may be inherently insoluble in a professorial setting, in part because the notion of academic motion is purely metaphoric. But encouraging signs of progress have emerged for a more literal analog. Researchers in control theory are perfecting a rep...

Two hundred years ago the Montgolfier brothers first demonstrated to the world that man-carrying "engines for flying" were possible. Their vehicle, however, did not have "artificiall Wings" but was a balloon filled with hot air. (A Brazilian, Bartolomeu de Gusmao, had flown a small unmanned hot air balloon 74 years earlier.') After successful unmanned demonstrations the first recorded free flig...