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A voice activated camera can explore the seas

Searching the deep sea with wired probes is difficult and batteries need to be recharged regularly.

Just over 70 percent of the earth’s surface is covered by oceans. The fact that we know less about the deep oceans than about the far side of the moon is the subject of countless science fiction narratives, but has little basis in reality. This may still be true for the deep sea today, as it is estimated that we only know about a third of the exotic creatures that live there. However, knowledge of deep-sea organisms is also essential for assessing the consequences of climate change, as examples from the planet’s past demonstrate. However, ocean research is resource-intensive and expensive.

The MIT research team is tackling the difficulty of real-time long-term underwater observations, citing today’s wired systems as a hurdle. To address this problem, the team developed a wireless, voice-only, battery-free underwater camera that could revolutionize marine research. In the journal Nature Communications introduced The device works 100,000 times more energy-efficiently than underwater cameras used in research to date.

The new device consists of a central element containing an image sensor and electronics, as well as a flash drive, and perhaps its most striking feature is the absence of a battery. Instead, sound acts as a source of energy. Water transmits sound better than air, and even man-made sound sources aside, there’s enough energy circulating in the ocean to power electronic devices like the newly invented camera.


To convert sound into electricity, the research team relied on piezoelectricity. The latter is a property of some crystals, such as quartz: thanks to their particular chemical structure, they react to pressure with an electric voltage. This energy is collected until it is enough to take a picture and send it. What is special about the new development is that it can capture color images even in low light conditions in the ocean, although the image sensor only allows black and white images to save energy. “When we went to art classes as kids, we learned that all colors can be made from three basic colors” – he has declared According to Fadel Adib, one of the authors of the study, the same is true for computer images. The proposed solution now uses three different LED flashers in red, green and blue. So the camera actually takes three photos in quick succession, which it combines into a single color image. This is possible due to total darkness in the depths.

However, in the case of wireless search probes, the question arises of how to transmit images. Again the team used a completely new approach. Image data is also transmitted bit by bit using sound. However, to save energy, the sound source is not on the camera, but on the receiver. The receiver sends out sound pulses, and the camera mirror reflects or absorbs them. The receiver is able to reconstruct the information from the reflection pattern of the camera. “This process consumes five orders of magnitude less power than typical underwater communications systems, as only one switch is required to convert the device from a non-reflective state to a reflective state,” said Sayed Saad Afzal.




The team tested the new solution in various surface waters and were able to successfully demonstrate its functionality. Data transmission has so far only been tested up to a range of 40 metres. The next step will be to see how this value can be increased. In addition, the camera receives a memory that allows you to record video. Fadel Adib, an MIT professor and leader of the Signal Kinetics group, said the most important application area of ​​the new development is climate research. “We make climate models, but we don’t have data on more than 95 percent of the ocean. This technology can help us make more accurate climate models, and we can better understand how climate change affects the underwater world,” he stressed.

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