Robots: The Next Generation of Monitoring Technicians

A network of underwater robots beaming up a near real-time environmental profile of lakes, rivers and reservoirs could soon be on the prowl helping to monitor water quality and safeguard the nation's drinking water.

The robots would replace researchers and volunteers who painstakingly collect water samples in bottles and take them back to the laboratory for analysis, an expensive, time-consuming and sometimes dangerous practice. By summer 2005, Syracuse University researchers will have installed a dozen robotic sensors to form the largest underwater monitoring system of its kind in the country. The project will cover more than 25 miles of the Seneca River and five connected lakes, including three municipal drinking water sources for more than 500,000 people in central New York. Similar underwater environmental monitoring programs are under way in Minnesota, Washington, Nevada and North Carolina. The underwater robots are known as a RUSS system -- Remote Underwater Sampling Stations -- developed in the late 1990s as part of a National Science Foundation educational project to give college and high school students an opportunity to monitor lakes and rivers over the Internet. The RUSS system includes a mobile, underwater sensor package, tethered to a floating platform, containing an onboard computer, solar panels and telemetry equipment for position tracking. As the computer-controlled sensors move vertically through the water, they collect data as frequently as every 10 minutes on temperature, oxygen, turbidity, light and salt content. This summer, the research team is hoping to add phosphorous, iron, nitrates, nitrites, ammonia and other substances to the list of monitored parameters. The data are transmitted via cellular phone signals to the main computer at Syracuse and eventually posted on the Web. The information enables scientists to better understand the environmental systems at work and assess whether the water is suitable for consumption, aquatic life and recreation. One of the system's greatest benefits is its ability to track pollution in real-time as it occurs, letting scientists manage it and make informed, on-the-spot decisions. The technology could be tailored to serve as an early warning system  to protect our waterways from terrorist attacks.

Environmental interns and technicians, don’t fear for your job security yet: the technology is not yet ready for year-round use. Currently, the robots are removed each winter. For more information about RUSS, visit http://lakeaccess.org/russ/.

Associated Press, May 12, 2004