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
4326	93-year-old woman catches lunker salmon to win derby	petethomasoutdoors	2011-08-18	CA
4327	Dreaded carp: Can they be stopped?	Star Tribune	2011-08-12	US
4328	Atlantic cod survive without vital immune genes, say scientists	theguardian	2011-08-10	UK
4329	Bass Angler Bradley Doing The Research Necessary To Catch The Big Fish In Maryland	underwatertimes	2011-08-09	US
4330	Scientist Urges Government Ruling On Genetically Engineered Salmon	Underwatertimes	2011-08-08	US
4331	Slinger angler sets world record for fish caught in 24 hours	Journal Sentinel	2011-08-01	US
4332	Gary the greedy gourami takes a break from eating KitKats	metro	2011-07-31	UK
4333	Natures spring: Cod bounce back	BBC News	2011-07-28	CA
4334	Dumped net angers fisherman	ODT	2011-07-29	NZ
4335	Bloodsucking-fish fossils overturn once-popular theory about our evolution	CBC News	2021-03-15	CA
4336	Canada Launches Satellite Technology That Identifies ‘Dark Vessels’ Illegally Catching Billions of Fish	Fisheries and Oceans Canada	2021-03-14	CA
4337	Blue marlin seen jumping in the surf at Jensen Beach washes up on shore later	Treasure Coast Newspapers	2021-03-01	US
4338	Marine Protected Areas in Oahu Provide Low Safety to Coral Reef Herbivorous Fishes	azocleantech	2021-03-01	US
4339	Maltese company confident of winning Sea Shepherd case	times of malta	2011-07-24	MT
4340	Sport masks 'ecological massacre'	northern star	2011-07-25	AU
4341	'Four-Eyed Fish Sees Above And Below Water	Underwatertimes	2011-07-20	CA
4342	Invasive snakehead found in river near Annapolis	The Baltimore Sun	2011-07-18	US
4343	First Study Into Gm Atlantic Salmon Mating Reveals Danger Of Escape To Wild Gene Pool	underwatertimes	2011-07-13	CA
4344	Answer for Invasive Species: Put It on a Plate and Eat It	nytimes	2011-07-09	US
4345	Teddy Carr In Contention At Bass Northern Open	Underwatertimes	2011-07-08	US
4346	Fishing industry quiet on worms in cod: report	thelocal	2011-07-03	SE
4347	Dairy Farm Owner Fined $15,000 For Discharging Manure Into North Branch Creek West	news.ontario.ca	2016-02-16	CA
4348	The GoFish Cam lets anglers see what's really happening underwater. And it records video too.	boingboing	2021-02-28	US
4349	When Chinook salmon is off the menu, other prey will do for endangered orcas	mongabay	2021-03-03	CA
4350	Ultra-rare Mexican walking fish found in stunned family's garden pond	dailystar	2021-03-02	MX

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