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An Energy-Efficient, Battery-Free, Wireless Underwater Camera — Powered by Sound

MIT researchers have developed a battery-free, wireless underwater camera that is about 100,000 times more energy-efficient than other undersea cameras. The device takes color photos — even in dark, underwater environments — and transmits image data wirelessly through the water. Watch this video to learn more about the autonomous camera that is powered by sound.

“One of the most exciting applications of this camera for me personally is in the context of climate monitoring. We are building climate models, but we are missing data from over 95 percent of the ocean. This technology could help us build more accurate climate models and better understand how climate change impacts the underwater world,” says Fadel Adib  , associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the Signal Kinetics group in the MIT Media Lab, and senior author of a new paper on the system.

Topics:
Cameras Electronics & Computers Imaging

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    Transcript

    00:00:00 researchers at MIT invented a battery free and wireless camera to image the underwater world to the right we see an underwater measurement setup with a battery-less sensor and active illumination the setup is Imaging an underwater object which is a coral model in this experiment to the left we see the color image that

    00:00:24 is being received and reconstructed the method starts using red active illumination followed by transmitting an image segment that is received and shown to the left the image segment is received in packets and applied to the red Channel once the first red segment is completed the method uses green active illumination to capture and send the

    00:00:49 same image segment which is applied to the green channel of the color image at the receiver subsequently the same is repeated using blue active illumination which is again received in packets and applied to the blue channel of the received image the same process repeats for other segments of the image allowing full

    00:01:14 reconstruction of color images at the receiver as can be seen to the left here the camera was used to image a coral the researchers also use the camera to image different animals and plants like this African starfish foreign they submerged the camera in rivers and lakes and captured images of underwater

    00:01:51 pollution like this plastic bottle they also planted multiple seeds of an aquatic plant and observed them grow over multiple days this camera opens new applications in exploring the underwater world most of which has never been observed by humans