Image

 ![Coastal research landscape used as the Northmoor University hero image.](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2026-01/camilo-botia-k4vFDPJoDZk-unsplash.1600x1200.jpg.avif?itok=ujHvC8nC)

 

 



Image

 ![Coastal research landscape used as the Northmoor University hero image.](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2026-01/camilo-botia-k4vFDPJoDZk-unsplash.1600x1200.jpg.avif?itok=ujHvC8nC)

 

 



Position title

Research Scientist, Marine Robotics

 

Person type

researcher

 

 

Email

s.hartley@northmoor.edu

 

Samuel Hartley is a research scientist in the marine robotics group, which means his name is on fewer papers than his contribution would suggest and on more deployments than anyone else's. He designs, builds, instruments and repairs the group's underwater vehicles, and he is usually the person on deck when one goes into the water.

His own research is on sensor integration — getting instruments built by different manufacturers, with different power requirements, timing assumptions and failure modes, to work as one payload. It is unglamorous and it is the difference between a vehicle that produces a dataset and one that produces four datasets that cannot be aligned.

He led the instrumentation for the 2026 glider crossing, which ran unattended for eleven days and returned a complete record. He is more interested in the two deployments before it that did not.

Hartley runs the test basin's operations and teaches the safety and operations sessions that every student working there has to pass. He supervises undergraduate projects in vehicle design and is the first person most competition team members go to when something stops working.



ORCID profile

[ORCID profile](https://orcid.org/0000-0001-3398-7726)