Target Detection for Advanced Environmental Monitoring of Marine Renewable Energy

Project Lead: Emma Cotter, Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington

Project Collaborators: Brian Polagye, Paul Murphy 

eScience Liaison: Bernease Herman

It is necessary to reduce the uncertainty surrounding the environmental effects of marine renewable energy for the industry to advance. The Adaptable Monitoring Package (AMP) is an instrumentation platform for that combines sonar, cameras, and hydrophones in a centrally controlled package. The AMP must be able to detect infrequent, but severe events, as well as frequent events that, when considered cumulatively, may be biologically significant. Detection of rare events requires continuous monitoring, which generates over 250 GB of data per hour, presenting a challenge for both data storage and processing. During the incubator, we will develop real-time target detection algorithms to control data acquisition, so that only relevant data is stored.

Figure 1: The Adaptable Monitoring Package and deployment system.