Author: Hannah Meiseles | MIT News correspondent<\/p>\n
As the Chemistry-Kayak (affectionately known as the ChemYak) swept over the Arctic estuary waters, Victoria Preston was glued to a monitor in a boat nearby, watching as the robot\u2019s sensors captured new data. She and her team had spent weeks preparing for this deployment. With only a week to work on-site, they were making use of the long summer days to collect thousands of observations of a hypothesized chemical anomaly associated with the annual ice-cover retreat.<\/p>\n
The robot moved up and down the stream, using its chemical sensors to detect the composition of the flowing water. Its many measurements revealed a short-lived but massive influx of greenhouse gases in the water during the annual \u201cflushing\u201d of the estuary as ice thawed and receded. For Preston, the experiment\u2019s success was a heartening affirmation of how robotic platforms can be leveraged to help scientists understand the environment in fundamentally new ways.<\/p>\n
Growing up near the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, Preston learned about the importance of environmental conservation from a young age. She became passionate about how next-generation technologies could be used as tools to make a difference. In 2016, Preston completed her BS in robotics engineering from Olin College of Engineering.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy first research project involved creating a drone that could take noninvasive blow samples from exhaling whales,\u201d Preston says. \u201cSome of our work required us to do automatic detection, which would allow the drone to find the blowhole and track it. Overall, it was a great introduction on how to apply fundamental robotics concepts to the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Preston\u2019s undergraduate research inspired her to apply for a Fulbright award, which enabled her to work at the Center for Biorobotics in Tallinn, Estonia, for nine months. There, she worked on a variety of robotics projects, such as training a robotic vehicle to map an enclosed underwater space<\/a>. \u201cI really enjoyed the experience, and it helped shape the research interests I hold today. It also confirmed that grad school was the right next step for me and the work I wanted to do,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Uncovering geochemical hotspots<\/strong><\/p>\n After her Fulbright ended, Preston began her PhD in aeronautics and astronautics and applied ocean physics and engineering through a joint program between MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Her co-advisors, Anna Michel and Nicholas Roy, have helped her pursue both theoretical and experimental questions. \u201cI really wanted to have an advisor relationship with a scientist,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was a high priority to me to make sure my work would always be a bridge between science and engineering objectives.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOverall, I see robots as a tool for scientists. They take knowledge, explore, bring back datasets. Then scientists do the actual hard work of extracting meaningful information to solve these hard problems,\u201d says Preston.<\/p>\n The first two years of her research focused on how to deploy robots in environments and process their collected data. She developed algorithms<\/a> that could allow the robot to move on its own. \u201cMy goal was to figure out how to exploit our knowledge of the world and use it to plan optimal sampling trajectories,\u201d says Preston. \u201cThis would allow robots to independently navigate to sample in regions of high interest to scientists.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Improving sampling trajectories becomes a major advantage when researchers are working under limited time or budget constraints. Preston was able to deploy her robot in Massachusetts\u2019 Wareham River to detect dissolved methane and other greenhouse gases, byproducts of a wastewater treatment chemical feedstock and natural processes. \u201cImagine you have a ground seepage of radiation you\u2019re trying to characterize. As the robot moves around, it might get \u2018wafts\u2019 of the radiation,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cOur algorithm would update to give the robot a new estimate of where the leak might be. The robot responds by moving to that location, collecting more samples and potentially discovering the biggest hotspot or cause for the leak. It also builds a model we can interpret along the way.\u201d This method is a major advancement in efficient sampling in the marine geochemical sciences, since historic strategies meant collecting random bottle samples to be analyzed later in the lab.<\/p>\n Adapting to real-world requirements<\/strong><\/p>\n In the next phase of her work, Preston has been incorporating an important component \u2014 time. This will improve explorations that last over several days. \u201cMy previous work made this strong assumption that the robot goes in and by the time it\u2019s done, nothing\u2019s different about the environment. In reality this isn\u2019t true, especially for a moving river,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re now trying to figure out how to better model how a space changes over time.\u201d<\/p>\n This fall, Preston will be traveling on the Scripps Institution of Oceanography research vessel Roger Revelle to the Guaymas Basin the Gulf of California. The research team will be releasing remotely operated and autonomous underwater robots near the bottom of the basin to investigate how hydrothermal plumes move in the water column. Working closely with engineers from the National Deep Submergence Facility, and in collaboration with her advisers and research colleagues at MIT, Preston will be on board, directing the deployment of the devices.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m looking forward to demonstrating how our algorithmic developments work in practice. It\u2019s also thrilling to be part of a huge, diverse group that\u2019s willing to try this,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Preston is just finishing her fourth year of research, and is starting to look toward the future after her PhD. She plans to continue studying marine and other climate-impacted environments. She is driven by our plethora of unexplored questions about the ocean and hopes to use her knowledge to scratch its surface. She\u2019s drawn to the field of computational sustainability, she says, which is based on \u201cthe idea is that machine learning, artificial intelligence, and similar tools can and should be applied to solve some of our most pressing challenges, and that these challenges will in turn change how we think about our tools.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a really exciting time to be a roboticist who also cares about the environment \u2014 and to be a scientist who has access to new tools for research. Maybe I\u2019m a little overly optimistic, but I believe we\u2019re at a pivotal moment for exploration.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Go to Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"