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
4276	State Record Yellow Perch Caught While Ice Fishing	Fish'n Canada	2021-03-18	US
4277	WVs blue cat fishery rapidly becoming destination resource	wvgazettemail	2021-03-06	US
4278	Microplastics found in seven popular fish species near Marina by NCCR researchers	Chennai News	2021-03-09	IN
4279	NJ fishing community says virus aid helps keep it afloat	theridgefieldpress	2021-03-08	US
4280	Farm-Raised Tilapia, With A Dash Of Antibiotic	NPR	2011-11-11	CA
4281	Fish Follow The Simple Rules Of Motion To School	underwatertimes	2011-11-07	SW
4282	Angler eats huge sea bass he caught only to discover it was a record breaker after he had tucked in	Daily Mail	2011-11-07	UK
4283	Illegal Fishing Threatens To Drive Eastern Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Extinct	Underwatertimes	2011-10-18	US
4284	Fishing film nets documentary prize	BBC News	2011-10-12	UK
4285	Manhattan man charged after dropping detergent in fish tank, killing fish and coral	ksnt	2021-03-10	US
4286	New Mexico teen catches possibly record breaking fish, releases it before getting official weight	Fox News	2021-03-07	US
4287	No fish tale: Missouri angler catches huge invasive black carp	fox2now	2021-03-09	US
4288	Norway's salmon rot as China takes revenge for dissident's Nobel Prize	independent	2011-10-23	UK
4289	Research Finds Fish Behavior May Seal Their Fate	underwatertimes	2011-10-04	CA
4290	The World's Largest Floating Fish Factory	gizmodo	2011-10-03	US
4291	Pros Carr, Bradley Qualify For Bassmaster WS National Championship	underwatertimes	2011-10-02	CA
4292	Mystery of Canada's missing salmon continues	nature	2011-09-28	CA
4293	Illusion Of Plenty' Masking Fish Population Collapse Off California Coast	Underwatertimes	2011-09-27	US
4294	Wind Whips Angler Teddy Carr At Oneida Lake	Underwatertimes	2011-09-24	US
4295	Study Finds Aquarium Fishes Are More Aggressive In Reduced Environments	underwatertimes	2011-09-23	US
4296	Small Fish Recover Faster Than Large Fish	Underwatertimes	2011-09-21	US
4297	The Science Behind the Fishy Smell in Smelly Fish	miaminewtimes	2011-09-20	CA
4298	Anglers Bradley, Carr Land Enough Fish To Qualify For Regional Bassmaster Event	underwatertimes	2011-09-19	US
4299	Bay of Fundy farmed salmon found in rivers	CBC News	2011-09-16	CA
4300	Fish shrinkage probed in lab	BBC News	2011-09-18	NO

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