Recently, the U.S. Department of Energy launched an ARPA-E Program called GOPHURRS, which stands for Grid Overhaul with Proactive, High-speed Undergrounding for Reliability, Resilience, and Security, and it has allocated $34 million for 12 projects across 11 states to strengthen and modernize America’s aging power grid by spurring the development of cost-effective, high-speed and safe undergrounding technologies.
One of the projects selected, awarded $3.3 million in funding, is the “Artificial Intelligence and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Real-Time Advanced Look-Ahead Subsurface Sensor,” which brings together the technological expertise of Hawaii-based Oceanit with the Tier-One research capabilities of the University of Houston.
On the UH team, Jiefu Chen — associate professor of electrical and computer engineering — focuses on designing electromagnetic antennas installed on UAV and HDD drilling string, as well as optimization of the subsurface imaging system; Yueqin Huang, assistant professor of information science technology, leads the geophysical signal processing needed to construct precise subsurface images ahead of the drill bit; while Xuqing Wu, associate professor of computer information systems, integrates machine learning for faster modeling and real-time image generation.
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