An Autonomous Robot Takes the Risk Out of Ice Measurement

Attackers can use smartphones to remotely unlock these cars and facilitate vehicle theft. Owners should check for the system and install the vendor's software update.

An ETH student team is developing an autonomous underwater robot that measures ice thickness from beneath the surface, keeping people off potentially dangerous ice while collecting valuable data for climate research. The project could help researchers gather measurements that are currently scarce—and potentially uncover.

What Happened

Our robot eliminates the risk of people having to go onto the ice to measure the thickness of the ice. It dives underwater and can measure the thickness of the ice from below.

• Researchers found a Bluetooth security system vulnerability affecting over two million vehicles sold since 2017.

• Our goal as a team is, of course, that our robot works, but also that we have a good time in the project and learn a lot.

• I decided to work on the project because I didn't just want to 00:01:11 learn theory, I also wanted to do something with my hands.

Key Details

Due to climate change, it is 00:00:20 important to measure ice thickness because it can provide important information for climate models. Polaris is a team of ten students, and we are eight mechanical engineers and two electrical engineers.

• Maybe we'll discover something new and find a variable for climate models that hasn't been established yet.

• Polaris can contribute to climate research 00:00:54 by collecting data that is not yet very common.

• And then we just move forward and dock onto the ice sheet to measure.

Why It Matters

We have a lot of sensors on board and regular propellers, simply put.

• We have a torpedo in which 00:00:37 all the electronics are housed.

What Reports Say

Coverage of the story so far points to:

• Continued reporting by Tech Briefs as more details emerge