Home
 |
|
What We Do While the EIS Department is diverse in the array of skills and expertise of our researchers, our focus can be grouped into three core research areas—acoustics and signal processing, environmental sensing and modeling, information and control systems. Our know-how is applied to the needs of the Department of Defense, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, National Science Foundation and other agencies and industry partners.Examples of our research efforts include the investigation of underwater acoustic communications to improve sensor networking, the study of the causes of hypoxia in Hood Canal, and the use of cognitive engineering approaches to study the needs of Puget Sound boaters that resulted in an interactive web application called BIS. Future directions for our group include chemical sensor engineering, ecosystem modeling of estuaries and coastal regions, and new areas of information science such as the study of social networks. One example of our research and development in chemical sensing is the use of revolutionary optical technologies to measure dissolved gases and to probe the geochemistry of remote and harsh environments.  The deep submersible Rama instrument deployed at a hydrothermal vent on the Juan de Fuca Ridge from Alvin. |
 David Jones, EIS Department Head Expertise
Applications
 Underwater Vehicle Autonomous Control Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) such as the XRay Flying Wing Glider must operate beyond the reach of human interdiction for long periods. EIS personnel develop the algorithms and software which act as the vehicle's "brain", telling it when to dive, where to go, and how to phone home with data. In addition, this logic enables the glider to receive and deploy new instructions from a remote operator. The department is also participating in the development of smart acoustic recording systems which run onboard the UW Seaglider, to help detect the presence of marine mammals during Navy exercises. University of Washington Probability Forecast Web-based forecasts are provided in the familiar weather graphics found in newspapers. Probcast adds probability information in ways that are most useful to the general public. For example, most people do not need to know the confidence interval of a temperature forecast, but they may need to know the highest temperature possible for a particular day. Choose your city/location and look at today's Probcast. |
Educational Opportunities Graduate and undergraduate students who wish to study at the Applied Physics Laboratory may work with EIS advisors who have joint appointments in UW academic departments. More >>Department researchers are tasked to design and implement a new national education strategy to enhance the pipeline for naval scientists and engineers. Featured Projects  Glider Monitoring, Piloting and Communication Buoyancy driven ocean gliders spend most of their operational life under water collecting ocean observations. At the end of each dive, they return to the surface, use a satellite link to tranmit the observations and vehicle data and check to see if their operation instructions have changed. The Glider Consortium is creating software systems to unify command and control interfaces for multiple ocean glider operations, including those employing gliders from different manufacturers. More >> NANOOS Web portal Explore the tools available to monitor maritime operation, ecosystem impacts, fisheries, and coastal hazards in Washington, Oregon, and Northern California waters. NANOOS is the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems. More >> Sonar Simulation Toolset (SST) turns 20 this year. Department researchers authored and continue to refine and expand SST—a computer program that produces simulated sonar signals, enabling users to build an artificial ocean that sounds like a real ocean. Such signals are useful for designing new sonar systems, testing existing sonars, predicting performance, developing tactics, training operators and officers, planning experiments, and interpreting measurements. SST's simulated signals include reverberation, target echoes, discrete sound sources, and background noise.It differs from most other acoustic modeling software in that SST produces artificial sound (digitally sampled), suitable for listening or for feeding into the signal-processing front end of a sonar receiver. SST does not, for example, produce plots of signal levels, or signal-to-noise ratio, or detection maps, or such high-level outputs. |