Project Title: Co-Design of Marine Energy Converters for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Docking and Recharging
Project Objectives:
This project focuses on performing foundational research and testing to accelerate the sector-wide development and deployment of marine energy converters to provide power at sea. Specifically, we seek to enable autonomous interactions between Wave Energy Converters (WECs) and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) through the co-design of predictive hydrodynamic models, autonomy algorithms for docking and inspection, and intelligent interfaces between the dock and vehicle. The developed technology will be tested annually at the O. H. Hinsdale Wave Laboratory in increasingly difficult conditions, with the goal of validating hydrodynamic models, providing open-source datasets, achieving docking and inspection capabilities in challenging conditions representative of the PacWave North and South testing sites, the Hawaii Wave Energy Test Site (WETS), and the Kilo Nalu nursery site.