A remotely operated underwater robot built by a team of Rice University engineering students pioneers a new way to control buoyancy via water-splitting fuel cells. The device, designed and constructed at the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen over the course of a year-long senior design capstone class, offers a more power-efficient method of maintaining neutral buoyancy—a critical component in underwater operations. The robot serves as proof-of-concept for the potential of fuel cell-based buoyancy control devices (BCDs) to reduce operating costs for remotely operated or autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) with potential applications ranging from environmental monitoring and oceanographic research to military and industrial tasks, providing a quieter, more energy-efficient alternative to conventional thruster-driven AUVs. Team Bay-Max, including Andrew Bare, Spencer Darwall, Noah Elzner, Rafe Neathery, Ethan Peck and Dan Zislis, based its project on an academic paper by researchers at Rice and the University of Houston showing that fuel cell-enabled depth control could reduce AUVs' energy consumption by as much as 85% compared to traditional DC motor-based thruster designs. Fathi Ghorbel, a professor of mechanical engineering and bioengineering at Rice and the team's sponsor, is a co-author on the study. "The BayMax student team was excited to implement an innovative research idea based on electrolysis," Ghorbel said. "The idea involves the transformation of water into hydrogen and oxygen gases to control AUVs' buoyancy to mimic fish' swim bladders. The research is part of a collaborative program between my lab, the lab of Professor Laura Schaefer at Rice and Professor Zheng Chen's lab at the University of Houston. "This collaborative research aims to develop tetherless continuum soft engines that utilize reversible proton exchange membrane fuel cells and water electrolyzers to drive volume-mass transformation. Through this design... |