Jacobs landmark of innovation: Deep-sea crawler Wally celebrates distinction in national contest
On March 2, 2011, Jacobs University’s deep-sea crawler “Wally” received its distinction as “Selected Landmark” in the nationwide innovation contest “365 Landmarks in the Land of Ideas”. The smart machine – the world’s first research robot that can be operated via Internet and supply a live stream of data and webcam videos from the ocean floor – was chosen from in total 2,600 contestants. This is the third time Jacobs University has been honored as one of the nation’s outstanding think tanks by the initiative “Germany – Land of Ideas”, a joint venture of Germany’s federal government and economy sector represented by the Federation of German Industries (BDI).
March 2, 2011“Research robot Wally combines advanced deep-sea and sensor technology with the simple idea that nowadays modern communication via Internet is able to overcome all spatial and temporal limitations. It therefore is an excellent example of how creative lateral thinking revolutionizes whole fields of work, in this case deep-sea research as well as marine environmental monitoring,” Martin Klinkhammer, Head of Private Wealth Management, Deutsche Bank Bremen, and Wally’s laureate said on the occasion of Wally’s distinction within “365 Landmarks in the Land of Ideas” contest.
Wally was developed over an 8-year-period in Jacobs University’s OceanLab under the lead of oceanographer Laurenz Thomsen. External cooperation partners, notably the Bremen company Titanium Solutions as well as the Max Planck Institute of Marine Microbiology, supported the project financially and scientifically.
“A long-term project such as our crawler can only be accomplished with the support of an excellent and highly motivated team – on- and off-campus. Moreover, Jacobs University provided ideal conditions for such an endeavor,” Laurenz Thomsen said in recognition of all those who were crucial to the project’s success. “Now, after the long years of R&D, the real excitement starts as we will be able to explore all the new research possibilities Wally offers,” Thomsen said.
So far, Wally I and his structurally identical twin Wally II have been used for research in 900 meters depth south of Vancouver Island as a mobile component of the NEPTUNE Canada deep-sea observatory, which has wired the ocean floor with an 800 km cable network and successfully has been feeding data and video material into the Internet for 15 months. It also were the Canadian scientists, who affectionately nicknamed the research robot “Wally” after the friendly Disney character “Wall•E”.
The ocean crawler is equipped with sensors for measuring temperature, pressure, currents, salinity, methane concentration and turbidity. It also features a webcam, providing detailed views of the seafloor sediments and local sea life. The robot has a corrosion-proof titanium framework and moves on dual tractor treads, which allow a full range of forward, backward and turning movement. Power and the communication feed is provided by an umbilical cable, which is tied to a fixed supply station but allows the robot to roam freely over an area of 1,500 m². Wally’s connection to the local deep-sea network permits full operational control of the robot and its webcam from any land-based computer connected to the internet, which is a world premiere. Thanks to the crawler’s unique control interface, the Jacobs researchers therefore can receive real-time data and steer the crawler by mouse click without leaving their laboratory in Bremen, 8,500 km away from the study site.
“Deep ocean science still suffers from insufficient access to continuous longtime and real-time data. Most research missions are run conventionally with lander deployments and retrieval from aboard research vessels, and subsequent data publication,” sais Laurenz Thomsen. These research cruises are not only spatially restricted but also often restricted to specific periods of the year, most of the time excluding the rough seasons. “Wally, however, allows access to study site data via a web interface throughout the whole year. One of his current research quests is to find out, whether earth quakes are preceded by distinctive increases of methane emission from the sea floor – information, which can be useful in the context of tsunami warning. For this research objective long-term monitoring in a larger area is essential,” Thomsen explains. In the future, various models of Internet operated ocean crawlers will be designed for missions in other marine environments and different monitoring purposes, for instance in the off-shore industry.
Wally’s distinction is the third time Jacobs University has been honored by the initiative “Germany – Land of Ideas”. In 2008, the university as a whole was chosen as a “Selected Landmark” due to its excellent research and teaching conditions as well as its unique multicultural educational concept. In Fall 2010, the Jacobs spin-off company Phytolutions was honored for the idea of using algae for eco-friendly energy and raw materials production while at the same time reducing climate-damaging CO2 from industrial exhaust.
“Germany – Land of Ideas” is a joint initiative of Germany’s federal government and economy sector represented by the Federation of German Industries (BDI) under the patronage of Federal President Christian Wulff. It was established on the occasion of the 2006 football world championship to showcase the unique characteristics of the German people: Ingenuity, passionate creativity and visionary thinking. Since then, the initiative has been arranging the yearly contest “365 Landmarks in the Land of Ideas” in co-operation with Deutsche Bank, in which a landmark is chosen for each day of the year, the term “landmark” signifying a distinction for future-oriented initiatives, institutions, clubs or organizations that exhibit the nation’s exceptional innovative spirit.
