Project launched to send robot swarms beneath ice shelves

This is the aim of a three-year, $1.5m project funded by the US National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs and led by Oregon State University researchers.

The project is designed to help advance underwater exploration in confined and hard-to-reach environments such as cavities under ice shelves, said Jessica Garwood, an assistant professor in Oregon State’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and the project’s principal investigator.

Warming ocean conditions are causing polar ice sheets and ice shelves to melt and contribute to global sea level rise, but studying the impact of this phenomenon poses a significant challenge for researchers who have limited tools to reach dangerous and deep, distant cavities beneath ice using existing tools, she said.

“Working in the water under ice is particularly challenging because communications are limited and there is no surface access to recover equipment,” Garwood said in a statement. “We need robots that can travel into these areas and also travel back out.”