A Northeastern professor’s robotic boats are exploring the Arctic

A large glacier at the edge of a body of water. — Ice melts near Nordenskjodbreen glacier on August 25, 2020 on the Norwegian Arctic Svalbard archipelago, Norway. Nordenskiöldbreen (Nordenskiöld Glacier) is a glacier in Spitsbergen, named after Finnish geologist Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld.

Jeremy Siegel is co-host of Morning Edition at GBH News. Feedback? Questions? Story ideas? Reach out to Jeremy at jeremy_siegel@wgbh.org.

October 05, 2023

Paris Alston: You're listening to GBH is Morning Edition. Just a fraction of 1% of the world's population has been to the Arctic. Northeastern Professor Hanu Singh is one of those few. In fact, he's been several times. Singh is an expert on robotics. On his most recent trip, he used a robot boat to look at just how quickly Arctic glaciers are melting. Professor Singh joined my co-host Jeremy Siegel to talk about his Arctic expeditions.

Jeremy Siegel: Professor Singh, good morning.

Prof. Hanu Singh: Good morning and thank you for having me.

Siegel: How many times have you personally been to the Arctic?

Singh: Oh, you know, I like to say we're bipolar. We've been to the Arctic and the Antarctic.

Siegel: Not many people can say that, huh?

Singh: You know, it's kind of interesting to think about, Jeremy, because you think about the ancient polar explorers right? Shackleton was an example. He went out, he sank his ship. He got lucky. He brought his entire crew back. But what's interesting to think about later is that after he came back, literally within a couple of weeks, he was planning his next expedition. And you'd think he'd had enough. And, you know, the first time I went out was in 2007 to the Gakkel Ridge, and I remember one of my technicians saying, “Hanu, I work on coral reefs, I work on fisheries, I work in all sorts of oceanography.” And he says, “That's it. You're now going to become a polar oceanographer.” And I said, “Why do you say that?” And there's this concept of polar fever. Once you've been there, it's the most beautiful part of this planet. And you want to go back. And it's kind of sad that, you know, with climate change, you can see changes happening right in front of your eyes.

Siegel: How have you personally seen it change?

Singh: So there's there's lots of interesting ways, right? If I go to Alaska, you can see ground-level subsidence. You can see telephone poles, which were, you know, planted in permafrost, which are not hanging straight up anymore. If you go and talk to the people there, it's kind of sad to see. We were in Greenland in April and it's really, really, you know, frozen hard. And then a colleague went there and you could see that, you know, the fjord actually had water on it. It was melting. And that early in the season. The Native population of Greenland, they're still trying to maintain their old ways. They use dog sleds, in part. The dog sleds are getting stuck, because earlier on the ice would be so hard in the winter that you'd skate over it very, very easily. But as the ice gets mushy because the temperature is changing, the dog sleds get stuck. So there are all these small things that are happening that you can see, that are really pretty dramatic and sad.

Siegel: So tell me what you did on this latest expedition: Using a robotic boat to study climate change. How did you do it?

Singh: So it's a long story. And on this particular expedition, it was a really short expedition. After COVID, we hadn't been to the Arctic or the Antarctic for a while. And I got an invitation from a collaborator, a Norwegian by the name of Martin Ludvigsen, Professor Martin Ludvigsen. And I asked him, I said, “Hey, I heard you guys are going to Svalbard. Do you have any extra room?” And he said, “Sure, what do you want to do?” And he had an autonomous surface vehicle, or a robotic boat. And we said, “We'd love to add some sensors to it and do some engineering tests regarding how glaciers are melting.” Now, there's a back story. Almost a decade ago — you know, I'm an engineer. I'm not a glaciologist. I'm not a physical oceanographer. I met with some collaborators, Fiamma Straneo from Scripps and Sarah Das from Woods Hole. And they were very interested in making measurements right at the edge of calving glaciers. Now, the problem with doing that is, you know, you don't want a human being there. Because if a chunk of ice the size of a building suddenly falls off, you know, bad things happen. But we could easily conceive of an inexpensive robot so that, in the small-probability event that a chunk of ice falls down on the robot, you know, so what, it's a robot.

Siegel: So it's a boat you're able to send out with no people on it.

Singh: Exactly. So the idea was, let's make something that's almost expendable so that we can make measurements that we don't want to really make by going there in person. It's something that's extreme in one sense, dangerous in another. But those measurements are kind of important. As we went out with them on numerous occasions, we learned that one other interesting problem that they have is understanding how glaciers and icebergs are melting. But, you know, we can see all that from satellites. If you look at a satellite picture from a point in time and six months later or a couple of months later, you can see and you can measure that change. But a lot of them are interested in seeing how things change on an hourly or a daily basis because they want to see what is the effect of the solar installation, what's the effect of tides, how is that really mattering? And so, you know, to try and do that, that's where we came in on this time. We said, “Okay, we'd been out last time and we'd measured icebergs and seen how they melted, with a robotic boat. But we want to see something like a water-terminating glacier and how that was changing over time.” And the big issue is, one, is it's dangerous to go close by. And the second thing is the measurements you want to make, you know, things don't change very dramatically over the course of hours. So you have to have very precise and repeatable measurements. You know, we have a saying: It's easy to make a measurement. It's when you make the second measurement and try and take the difference, that's when it counts.

Siegel: So you used robots to do this, to take these measurements safely. So much of our conversation lately about robots and artificial intelligence and things like that has been about how robots and artificial intelligence will be the end of us. But you're using robotics to try to help fight the climate crisis, to understand global warming. Do you think robots will save the world? I know it's a weird question, but do you?

Singh: You know, it's a matter of how we look at them, right? And one way of looking at robots is saying, hey, they're doing the stuff that's dull, dirty and dangerous. The Roomba is sweeping your floor. Nobody wants to sweep the floor. I don't.

Siegel: Neither do I.

Singh: So that's the dull and the dirty, right? And then what we're doing is kind of dangerous. You know, if you want to make measurements under sea ice in the Antarctic, you don't want to put a diver there. They can't do it. So there are applications where it really makes a difference that we use these robots. And it goes not just for climate change. Whether it's in medical robots where we can be much more efficient or on autonomous cars, where we can take some of the tedium off.

Siegel: Professor Singh, it has been fascinating speaking with you about this. Thank you so much for coming in.

Singh: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Alston: That was my co-host, Jeremy Siegel, speaking with Northeastern Professor Hanu Singh. You're listening to GBH's Morning Edition.

Northeastern professor Hanu Singh’s robots do what human researchers can’t, or what they ought not to, like getting really close to massive glaciers.

“You don't want a human being there, because if a chunk of ice the size of a building suddenly falls off, you know, bad things happen,” the robotics expert told GBH’s Morning Edition Thursday.

Singh has collaborated with researchers who want to learn more about how glaciers change over a short period of time — things that can't be observed remotely via satellite imagery. That's where his robotic boats come into play.

“One way of looking at robots is saying, ‘Hey, they’re doing the stuff that’s dull, dirty and dangerous.’”

On Singh's most recent expedition, to glaciers at the edge of the water near the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, he was collecting data on how glaciers melt over the course of hours, not months.

“They were very interested in making measurements right at the edge of calving glaciers,” Singh said. “A lot of [scientists] are interested in seeing how things change on an hourly or a daily basis because they want to see what is the effect of the solar installation, what's the effect of tides, how is that really mattering?”

His robot boats take precise measurements on the surfaces of Arctic glaciers, a job that is both dangerous and tedious.

“Things don't change very dramatically over the course of hours,” he said, “so you have to have very precise and repeatable measurements.”

Perhaps not the best-suited job for humans, he said, but not a bad one for a robot.

“One way of looking at robots is saying, 'Hey, they're doing the stuff that's dull, dirty and dangerous,'” Singh said. “There are applications where it really makes a difference that we use these robots. And it goes not just for climate change, whether it's in medical robots where we can be much more efficient or on autonomous cars, where we can take some of the tedium off.”

Singh's research has sent him across the world. But he said the Arctic and Antarctic are particularly special to him.

“Once you've been there, it's the most beautiful part of this planet. And you want to go back,” he said. “And it's kind of sad that, with climate change, you can see changes happening right in front of your eyes.”