A Swarm of Biologically-inspired Little Underwater Explorers

A Swarm of Biologically-inspired Little Underwater Explorers

By Florian Berlinger, Melvin Gauci, Jeff Dusek

Source: harvard

1/15/2021

Florian Berlinger, Melvin Gauci, Jeff Dusek

The natural world abounds with self-organizing collectives, where large numbers of relatively simple agents use local interactions to produce impressive global behaviors. Fish schools are particularly impressive – collectives of thousands migrate long distances, search for resources, and even form dynamic shapes like flash expansions or bait balls to evade predators or capture prey. Even more inspiring are the fish schools that move within coral reefs, navigating together in complex cluttered environments. These biological collectives exhibit several properties that are highly desirable from an engineering perspective: they are decentralized, providing robustness to failure of agents, and they rely primarily on local sensing and nearest neighbor interactions, exhibiting high degrees of scalability and adaptability.

The goal of the BlueSwarm Project is to develop a novel 3D swarm testbed inspired by reef fish schools: An underwater robot collective, with 30+ fully-autonomous miniature (~10cm) robots, that use purely local communication and sensing to demonstrate complex global 3D coordination, inspired by the kinds of complexity that coral reef fish schools achieve.

This new project has three main thrusts: (a) The development of an underwater robot swarm platform, with miniature (~10cm) but highly maneuverable underwater robots. (b) The development of algorithms and programming methodologies to create complex global-to-local 3D collective behaviors using implicit coordination. (c) Using BlueSwarm robots to understand fish biomechanics and schooling. See our recent publications and movie links below for current progress.

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News Id		Source	Stamp	country
4026	Missouri man catches possible world record breaking spotted gar fish	Fox News	2021-04-20	US
4027	That's a big fish: Record-breaking 271-kg tuna caught off the coast of Australia	timesnownews	2021-04-21	JP
4028	271kg bluefin tuna the ‘biggest ever’ fish sold at Sydney Fish Markets	news	2021-04-21	US
4029	Clowhom River watershed focus of online discussion	coastreporter	2017-02-16	CA
4030	Chilcotin steelhead run near extinction	vancouversun	2020-06-13	CA
4031	Gar fish reveal true age of our eye-brain connection	futurity	2021-04-12	US
4032	N.B. fishing season opens, but outfitters miss international anglers	CBC News	2021-04-15	CA
4033	Tensions rise in water battle along Oregon-California line	opb	2021-04-12	US
4034	New species of fish discovered in ocean trench near NZ	nzherald	2013-02-04	NZ
4035	Salmon virus poses no risk to U.S. exports: CFIA	CBC News	2013-02-01	CA
4036	Astonishing pictures of the bizarre creatures that lurk deep beneath the ocean waves	dailymail	2013-01-30	UK
4037	Historic cod fishing cuts threaten centuries-old industry in New England	CNN	2013-02-04	CA
4038	Are You Eating What You Think You’re Eating?	slate	2013-01-29	US
4039	Landslide blocks Beatton River	alaskahighwaynews	2015-10-19	CA
4040	Shocking developments: Fish and Game plans to electrofish 12,000 rainbow trout from South Fork	postregister	2021-04-15	US
4041	Aboard the Lake Guardian, scientists fish for the story of Lake Ontario	wxxinews	2021-04-13	US
4042	Nearly 30 invasive carp pulled from Mississippi River in herding operation	Star Tribune	2021-04-09	US
4043	Underwater fish tornado	earthsky	2013-01-28	US
4044	Biologists campaign to save fish	Taiwan News	2013-01-28	TW
4045	DNR: Angler Caught Nearly 250 Fish Illegally	minnesota.cbslocal	2013-01-24	US
4046	Teen angler thumbs his nose at critics of his sport	portnews	2013-01-23	US
4047	Gilbert spa owner challenges order stopping fish pedicures	eastvalleytribune	2013-01-14	US
4048	Anglers finally off the hook as scientists settle age-old debate over whether fish feel pain	dailymail	2013-01-12	UK
4049	Colombo's fishy beauty in danger of extinction	emirates247	2013-01-13	LK
4050	Salmon Runs Boom, Go Bust Over Centuries; No 'Signal Of Commercial Fishing' In Trends	Underwatertimes	2013-01-14	US

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