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
4176	Zoologger: The fish with its genitals on its head	newscientist	2012-07-05	VN
4177	Video Shows Men Catching Protected Sturgeon On Delta	sacramento cbslocal	2012-07-02	US
4178	Cod stocks in North Sea 'increasing' says Ices report	bbc	2012-06-29	CA
4179	20 years later, cod recovery off Newfoundland finally evident	The Canadian Press	2012-06-30	CA
4180	Just gorgeous: A blue-eyed triplefin fish from New Zealand features in amazing pictures from beneath the waves	dailymail	2012-06-20	NZ
4181	Video Captures Fishing Rage: Mate Goes Berserk After Angler Loses Fish	sportfishingmag	2012-06-14	UK
4182	Enjoying a winter wonderland of fishing	bclocalnews	2021-02-03	CA
4183	‘A lost run’: logging and climate change decimate steelhead in B.C. river	thenarwhal	2020-11-26	CA
4184	Kettle River closed to fishing until Aug. 25 to protect fish	bclocalnews	2020-06-30	CA
4185	Kettle River was first known as Nehoialpitku	nelsonstar	2015-06-07	CA
4186	Border jumper avoided arrest by floating down a B.C. river for hours: Mounties	ctvnews	2020-07-27	CA
4187	Learning from Indigenous leadership in Haida Gwaii	natureconservancy	2020-04-20	CA
4188	Quarter of fish in Hauraki Gulf have microplastics in their guts, study finds	stuff	2012-03-18	NZ
4189	'Black fish' scam trawlermen admit illegally landing £6.6m worth of herring and mackerel	dailyrecord	2012-06-14	UK
4190	Robotic fish’s painted smile helps it get friendly with tank-mates	metro	2012-06-08	UK
4191	Invasive snakehead predator fish caught in pond in B.C. park	thestar	2012-06-08	CA
4192	Agriculture minister refutes accusations about Animal Health	comoxvalleyrecord	2012-06-05	US
4193	Survey: Most Ohio Voters Worry About Invasive Fish	fox8	2012-06-05	CA
4194	Leaping sturgeon injures woman in Suwanee River	jacksonville	2012-06-05	US
4195	Why ‘River Monsters’ still rules reality television	hollywoodsoapbox	2012-05-29	US
4196	Otsego angler facing jail time, possible $3,000 fine	hometownsource	2012-05-29	US
4197	Pacific Bluefin Tuna Carrying Fukushima Radioactivity To California Coast	Underwatertimes	2012-05-29	US
4198	Rare encounter between 2 wild, shrieking lynx caught on video	CBC News	2018-05-21	CA
4199	Caught on cam: Dramatic river rescue at Little Qualicum Falls	ctvnews	2020-12-14	CA
4200	Rescue crews save man from raging Little Qualicum River waters	pqbnews	2020-12-13	CA

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