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.

Continue...

News Id		Source	Stamp	country
4201	Some Green Groups Oppose Lower Snake River Dam Removal Plan	Associated Press	2021-03-27	US
4202	Minnesota, Wisconsin DNR Tackle Invasive Carp on Mississippi	Associated Press	2021-03-31	US
4203	Rhode Island Moves up Start of Trout Fishing Season	Associated Press	2021-03-28	US
4204	North Carolina man found dead in river after jumping in to save son	Fox News	2021-03-24	US
4205	Canadian Coal Company Pays $60M for Environmental Damage	Associated Press	2021-03-29	US
4206	Behind the scenes at the Fish Hospital at Atlantis Dubai	CNN	2021-03-22	SA
4207	Biofluorescent fish documented in the Arctic for the first time	upi	2021-03-18	US
4208	Is your fish a fake? How to spot seafood fraud and what to do if you're suspicious	theguardian	2021-03-15	UK
4209	“Rock Snot” Invasive Algae Found in Delaware River, Threatens Trout Fishing	nbcnewyork	2012-04-30	US
4210	Florida in invasive fish fight	upi	2012-05-01	US
4211	Salmon poacher becomes first person to be convicted on evidence from underwater cameras	dailyrecord	2012-04-18	UK
4212	N.S. salmon farm told to destroy all fish	CBC News	2012-04-26	CA
4213	It's The Bowl That Makes Goldfish Stupid; Fish Brains Adjust To Meet Environmental Needs	underwatertimes	2012-04-25	FI
4214	Young fisherman, 13, reels in huge fish that weighs 46.9lbs and is as big as him	dailymail	2012-04-24	UK
4215	Salmon farms 'polluting' lochs in Scotland	bbc	2012-04-20	UK
4216	Yellowfin tuna is enormous (427.9 pounds), but no record	petethomasoutdoors	2013-04-16	MX
4217	Belford man catches giant catfish at fishery in Thailand	chroniclelive	2013-11-07	TH
4218	RCMP call off river search for Fort Liard elder	CBC News	2011-06-02	CA
4219	Students monitor record coho salmon run in Millstone River	viu	2010-11-05	CA
4220	Salmon returning to Millstone River	nanaimobulletin	2013-11-07	CA
4221	Fishing season in Nanaimo	thenav	2013-03-20	CA
4222	Из притоков Амура почти исчезла краснокнижная рыба	ИА Амур.инфо	2020-12-25	RU
4223	The fish caught in a Nigerian village is not worth millions of dollars	afp	2021-03-09	NI
4224	Natural Water Flows To Be Restored To Theodosia River	gov.bc	2000-12-20	CA
4225	Revealed: 16 ‘toxic’ chemicals fish farmers are allowed to use	theferret	2021-03-17	UK

168 of [217 - pages.]