Abstract Three of the largest oceanic basins on Earth, which are critical for sustaining life, surround Canada. Moreover, the monitoring of the oceans’ physical and biological states can help better understand climate change and the status of marine species. Yet no technology can provide a near real-time and large-scale assessment of oceanic conditions in a pre-defined area. Exacerbating this situation, the House of Commons has raised concerns about our own Arctic sovereignty and security. Therefore, Canada is in a strategic position for timely developing technological innovations with broad impacts.

The first part of this talk will provide an overview of the main challenges and extreme conditions facing the exploitation of networks of maritime autonomous systems operating in the underwater and Arctic domains. Those challenges encompass power and energy, communication, sensing, and endurance, just to name a few. The second part of the talk will present some recent developments that occurred at DRDC and providing potential solutions to those challenges. The talk will conclude with several research opportunities and topics for future work. Overall, this talk will provide the audience with a high-level understanding of the fascinating aspects of this research field.

In 2022, inventors filed more than 3.5 million new patent applications worldwide and the total number of patents in force reached approximately 17.3 million (WIPO, 2023). Patents are a rich source of scientific and technical information, much of which is not published elsewhere. Patent literature is interdisciplinary and international, encompassing innovations in every field of technology during the last two hundred years. Patents contain solutions to technical problems and engineering challenges. Patents reveal the current state-of-the-art and provide vital information for making informed decisions about new research projects and business opportunities. In this workshop you will learn how to search, evaluate, and use patent information. Specific topics include:

•           Why patents are important sources of technical information
•           Types of patents
•           Where to find patents
•           How to retrieve patents by patent number, inventor name, and company name
•           Types of patent searches: patentability, freedom-to-operate, and landscape analysis
•           How to search for patents using patent classification codes

Instructor

Michael White is the librarian for research services in the Engineering and Science Library.