The JaiaBot, pictured here during an in-water demonstration at the URI Research Foundation’s 401 Tech Bridge BlueTIDE event, is a payload-carrying aquatic drone developed by Jaia Robotics.
URI and NUWC have created a mutually beneficial ecosystem that boosts Rhode Island’s undersea blue economy.
By Bill Ibelle
In the natural world, the most resilient ecosystems are based on intricate networks in which each element strengthens the other by capitalizing on their mutual purposes. The University of Rhode Island and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center-Division Newport (NUWC) have created an ecosystem that operates on the same principle.
It is a primary reason Rhode Island can punch above its weight in the blue economy, backed by this unique cooperation between the academic, government, military, and commercial domains.
“We’re all working on the same mission, and it starts here at URI,” says Brennan Phillips ’04, Ph.D. ’16, associate professor of ocean engineering and head of URI’s Undersea Robotics and Imaging Laboratory. “We’re a training ground for NUWC, pumping out engineering students at every level—undergraduate, master’s, and Ph.D.s.”
NUWC-Division Newport is the U.S. Navy’s oldest warfare center. It conducts wide-ranging research, development, testing, and evaluation of submarine technology and underwater warfare systems. NUWC estimates that approximately 20% of its 3,000-plus employees have URI degrees, making URI the center’s single largest academic source of talent—three times the second largest contributor.
Jason Gomez, M.S. ’97, Ph.D. ’01, is NUWC’s chief technology officer. He completed his master’s and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering at URI. “URI has been a great partner to NUWC Newport for decades, providing top-notch education for new hires and continuing education for our workforce,” says Gomez.
NUWC estimates that approximately 20% of its 3,000-plus employees have URI degrees, making URI the center’s single largest academic source of talent.
And the impact of this partnership isn’t limited to Navy research jobs. URI graduates have launched some of the state’s most innovative blue economy start-ups, and they populate the corporate ranks of powerhouses like Raytheon and General Dynamics. “URI is also an important research collaborator in many technical areas important to underwater warfare, including oceanography, acoustics, advanced materials, and robotics,” Gomez says.
Professor James Miller of URI’s Department of Ocean Engineering describes it this way: “Rhode Island has become the Silicon Valley for underwater technology.”
The Ecosystem in Action
Groundbreaking innovations are rarely made by solitary geniuses. They require networks of specialists in complementary fields, all working toward a common goal. For example, consider an invention that’s poised to transform deep-sea exploration and monitoring.
The idea was conceived by Phillips while he was conducting field research using low-light sensors to study deep-sea organisms without altering their behavior.
The problem was that existing tools for deep-sea exploration were too cumbersome, expensive, and difficult to transport for the far-ranging work he envisioned. His solution was to develop a smaller, lighter device that could be deployed from a small boat rather than a massive research vessel.
Although Phillips’ work had nothing to do with submarines, torpedoes, or preventing enemy scuba divers from attacking U.S. warships, the Navy quickly took an interest in the project.
“NUWC is interested in developing a greater understanding of the deep-sea world,” says Phillips. “They want to know more about the environment so they can operate within it. Being able to work in the deep ocean is a strategic advantage.”
As a result, NUWC supported Phillips’ work with research funding and collaborative fieldwork.
Phillips’ first challenge was to create a fiber-optic cable as thin as a fishing line, yet powerful enough to transmit live video imagery from sensors thousands of feet below the surface. His goal was to develop a system small enough to deploy sophisticated sensors from a small boat.
“It all comes down to the diameter of the cable,” says Phillips. “A cable that’s three-quarters of an inch in diameter weighs many tons when you have 4,000 meters of it, which means you need a massive winch to go with it. If you make the cable smaller, everything scales down accordingly.”
He had an ultra-thin fiber-optic cable, but it wasn’t strong enough to handle the demands of deep-sea exploration.
Jim Owens, founder of Nautilus Defense, at the BlueTIDE event in Newport.Nautilus was one of the first participants in RI MADE, a URI program that offers training and fundraising for tech start-ups.
“I wanted to get to the point where I had a winch that could get sensors somewhere deep in the ocean, but that I could carry in a suitcase”
—Brennan Phillips ’04, Ph.D. ’16, associate professor of ocean engineering and head of URI’s Undersea Robotics and Imaging Laboratory
To solve this challenge, he called upon the expertise of Jim Owens, founder of Nautilus Defense, a Rhode Island start-up based in Pawtucket. Owens was developing ways to integrate tiny strands of wire into fabrics that could be used in the medical field for things like wearable neonatal heart monitors for infants. He had been working with several URI engineering labs on various projects, so he accepted Phillips’ request and, in just two weeks, delivered a prototype for a braided tether with a textile sheath to strengthen the miniaturized fiber-optic cable.
Over the next several years, Phillips and Owens—along with several URI students—tested and refined the tether, eventually testing it at depths greater than 800 meters off the coast of Bermuda. They have since earned a joint patent for the smallest, high-strength, fiber-optic tether available—one that reduces the weight of the tether from tons to ounces.
“I wanted to get to the point where I had a winch that could get sensors somewhere deep in the ocean, but that I could carry in a suitcase,” says Phillips.
Working Together for the Win
This breakthrough might never have occurred if it hadn’t been for several joint URI-NUWC programs aimed at developing dual-use innovations—innovations with both commercial and defense applications.
Nautilus was one of the first participants in RI MADE, a URI program funded by the U.S. Department of Defense that provides funding and training for promising new companies. Owens’ early braiding developments at Nautilus were made possible by purchasing legacy braiding machines built a century ago during Rhode Island’s textile boom and converting them for the manufacturing conducted in his high-tech prototyping lab. One of his first workhorses was originally used to make candlewicks.
But retrofitting century-old machines can only take you so far, so RI MADE provided funding for one of the company’s first advanced braiding machines.
“This partnership allowed us to take a risk on the equipment side of the business,” says Owens.
Nautilus’ fiber-optic tether has been consistently supported by another Navy program co-led by Miller.
In addition to his academic and research responsibilities, Miller is co-director of the National Institute for Undersea Vehicle Technology, which promotes deep-sea research projects of interest to NUWC. It was established with funding from the Office of Naval Research and is a joint venture of URI, the University of Connecticut, and General Dynamics Electric Boat, in collaboration with NUWC.
“The organization has worked with 90 faculty members at the two schools and invested more than $200 million in 200 projects,” says Miller. “That’s big money.”
Each of those projects includes student interns who contribute to classified naval research.
The result is a win-win for URI and the Navy. Phillips has a miniaturized fiber-optic tether he can use in his deep-sea research, and the Navy will soon have an extremely portable way to deploy a variety of sensors into the deep ocean.
Commercialization
The story doesn’t end there. The final challenge has been to bring the product to market—a task taken on by a start-up created by two of Phillips’ former ocean engineering students. Juice Robotics is designing a miniaturized reel system capable of deploying thousands of feet of fiber-optic tether from a drone, Jet Ski, or the deck of a small boat. This HIGH DIVE system consists of an unmanned aerial vehicle, a fiber winch, and a sensor.
“HIGH DIVE will be so compact that you can conduct the entire mission from the trunk of your car,” says co-founder Matt Jewell ’10. “It’s everything you need to explore the deep ocean.”
“HIGH DIVE will be so compact that you can conduct the entire mission from the trunk of your car. It’s everything you need to explore the deep ocean.”
—Matt Jewell ’10, co-founder of Juice Robotics
Jason Noel ’22 recently joined Juice Robotics as a scientific advisor. Now a doctoral student in URI’s ocean engineering program, he has been a member of Phillips’ lab since his sophomore year, working on the miniature deep-sea cameras that Phillips uses in his research. Now he’s using his engineering expertise to design the company’s drone-based reel-and-tether system.
“We’ve designed the product for rapid deployment without needing to have anyone in the field,” says Noel. “In addition to potential use in naval security, it will be useful for search and rescue operations, offshore wind, oil and gas, and academic research.”
The Juice Robotics team at the Ocean Technology Center on URI’s Narragansett Bay Campus, where they developed, and are now commercializing, their HIGH DIVE UAV-based ocean sensing system. Above, left to right: Jason Noel ’22; Russ Shomberg, M.S. ’20, Ph.D. ’23; Matt Jewell ’10; Rob Hauser ’24; and Brennan Phillips ’04, Ph.D. ’16.
Noel is also mastering the business side of product innovation as a fellow in URI’s Patents2Products program. The program is sponsored by RISE-UP, an innovation program funded by the Navy to develop dual-use commercial products that have a naval application. The goal is to provide students with the business acumen needed to move ideas from the laboratory to the marketplace. In addition, the program has funded a makerspace on URI’s Narragansett Bay Campus, where Noel researches and tests the fiber-optic reel system.
“This program has helped guide my research into the commercial setting,” says Noel. “The networking opportunities have been incredible. I’ve met many talented researchers, inventors, and businesspeople who will help guide my career when I complete my thesis.”
Juice Robotics’ tether and reel system is just one example of the innovations produced by URI’s extensive networking with NUWC and commercial start-ups.
Showcasing Innovative Technology
Jaia Robotics was one of more than 40 companies that participated in the second annual BlueTIDE event in Newport last summer, hosted by the URI Research Foundation’s 401 Tech Bridge. At the event, companies did in-water demonstrations of their technology and networked with Department of Defense officials, industry leaders, and potential investors.
Jaia Robotics demonstrated the JaiaBot, a payload-carrying aquatic drone that’s shaped like a miniature torpedo (3 feet long) and scoots along the surface of the ocean at 10 knots. It’s surprisingly agile, darting back and forth like a slalom skier, and carries a payload of whatever sensors the job requires. Weighing just 6 pounds, it can be tossed off a dock or a boat like a javelin. It’s also inexpensive enough to deploy in swarms, which can cover areas faster and more efficiently than single drones, for a variety of tasks and missions, from mapping the seafloor to searching for intruders.
JaiaBot performed in-water demonstrations at the BlueTIDE event at Sail Newport in Fort Adams State Park in Newport, R.I.
What makes the JaiaBot so versatile is that it’s so easy to swap out sensors based on the task. Its military uses include ship and port security. Because it can map a large area of the ocean floor in just 20 minutes, it has been used in aquaculture, environmental monitoring, the fishing industry, and offshore wind.
So far, the company has sold about 250 JaiaBots worldwide, including two recent sales to URI. Other sales have gone to the U.S. Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Army.
Like Nautilus, Jaia Robotics also participated in URI’s RI MADE program, which helped it tighten its cybersecurity to meet Navy requirements.
Jaia Robotics production manager Mark Milligan (left) and CEO and co-founder Ian Estaphan Owen (center) show their JaiaBot to R.I. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (right) at the BlueTide event in Newport, R.I.
Jaia Robotics’ Michael Rock ’21, M.S. ’22, and Ian Estaphan Owen demonstrate JaiaBots.
Like most of the blue economy companies in the state, Jaia has URI interns and employees. Its vice president of product management, Michael Rock ’21, M.S. ’22, worked in Phillips’ lab as an ocean engineering student at URI, as well as in ocean engineering professor Stephen Licht’s lab. He also interned at NUWC for three years. Now, in his role at Jaia, Rock hires URI students as interns and URI alumni as employees.
“URI’s small classes and hands-on research gave me practical experience in robotics, acoustics, oceanography, instrumentation, and data analysis, which led to an internship at NUWC developing autonomous unmanned underwater vehicle behaviors,” says Rock. “These experiences gave me the confidence to build a career in blue tech and provided the technical depth and network I now use to create safe, user-friendly aquatic drones at Jaia Robotics.”
Dual-Use Sonar
Matthew Zimmerman ’01 is not a military guy. His interest was whales—specifically reducing ship collisions, which is by far the most common cause of whale deaths. As an undergraduate ocean engineering student, he worked with Miller, and, following graduation, he co-founded FarSounder with his former professor.
Using technology initially developed by Miller, FarSounder has perfected a forward-looking 3D sonar for ships and large pleasure yachts.
With real-time vision up to 1,000 meters ahead—and the ability to function effectively at up to 25 knots—ships can now detect whales earlier and avoid colliding with them. FarSounder also makes it possible for yachts and ships to navigate safely in poorly charted waters. The Navy is interested in FarSounder as a way to protect ports and ships from approaching divers and unmanned underwater vehicles.
Benefits for All
These are just three examples of how the ecosystem built by URI and NUWC has generated innovative products in the undersea blue economy.
The Navy benefits from the academic and commercial innovators who focus on projects important to its mission, as well as from the URI research that can embrace the uncertainty of innovation.
“Academia has the freedom to develop and test ideas that might not work,” notes Miller. “And this willingness to take risks enhances innovation.”
Both the Navy and private industry benefit from a pipeline of well-trained graduates who already have practical experience in their field, while start-ups receive coaching on issues ranging from risk management and cybersecurity to supply chain management.
“Academia has the freedom to develop and test ideas that might not work. And this willingness to take risks enhances innovation.”
—James Miller, URI Professor of Ocean Engineering
“The importance of the undersea domain for both defense and commercial applications continues to grow,” says Elizabeth Magliula, director of research for NUWC’s Chief Technology Office. “The ability for us to work with URI across multiple levels provides both a workforce pipeline, from interns to graduate students, and innovative solutions, from senior design projects to research on shock loading of implodable volumes.”
In addition to scientific and financial support for its research, URI gets a reliable source of student internships and a massive employment pipeline for its students.
“It’s a way to get our students straight into NUWC,” says Phillips. “When they go for their interview, they can say, ‘For the last three years, I’ve been working on one of your projects.”
PHOTOS: MICHAEL SALERNO; SETH JACOBSON; COURTESY MICHAEL ROCK