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MAY 2021 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 17 have a better understanding for their company, that knowledge is balanced by the fact that the committee meetings are open. Even if you're not participating as a committee member, you can still sit in and be exposed to the same infor- mation in real time, if you have a vested inter- est in that topic. Rowe: Absolutely. Anyone can participate in a committee meeting, and many people who come to see what's happening will join the group and stay to contribute. Sometimes it takes years for a new requirement to make it into a standard because we need time to look at data, perhaps do testing, and build criteria. Johnson: Right. It's a situation where it's not so much a competitive advantage as a collabora- tive advantage. Rowe: Exactly. Johnson: anks for this overview, Teresa. Very helpful! Rowe: You're welcome! SMT007 There is a lot of activity beneath the vast, lonely expanses of ice and snow in the Arctic. For scien- tists to understand the role this changing environ- ment in the Arctic Ocean plays in global climate change, there is a need for mapping the ocean below the ice cover. A team of MIT engineers and naval officers led by Henrik Schmidt, professor of mechanical and ocean engineering, is trying to understand environmen- tal changes, their impact on acoustic transmission beneath the surface, and how these changes affect navigation and communication for vehicles travel- ing below the ice. "Basically, what we want to understand is how does this new Arctic environment brought about by global climate change affect the use of underwater sound for communication, naviga- tion, and sensing?" explains Schmidt. To answer this question, Schmidt traveled to the Arctic with members of the Laboratory for Autonomous Marine Sensing Systems (LAMSS) including Daniel Goodwin and Bra- dli Howard, graduate students in the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in oceano- graphic engineering. Using an unpiloted, autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) built by General Dynamics-Mission Systems (GD-MS), and a system of sensors rigged on buoys developed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institu- tion, Schmidt and his team, joined by Dan McDon- ald and Josiah DeLange of GD-MS, set out to dem- onstrate a new integrated acoustic communication and navigation concept. The framework, which was also supported and developed by LAMSS members Supun Randeni, EeShan Bhatt, Rui Chen, and Oscar Viquez, as well as LAMSS alumnus Toby Schneider of GobySoft LLC, would allow vehicles to travel through the water with GPS-level accuracy while employing oceanographic sensors for data collection. "In order to prove that you can use this naviga- tional concept in the Arctic, we have to first ensure we fully understand the environment that we're operating in," adds Goodwin. (Source: MIT News Office) Navigating Beneath the Arctic Ice (Credit: Daniel Goodwin LCDR, USN)