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
4351	Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo looking for Guinness World Record this year	AL	2011-07-03	US
4352	The UAE’s other black gold: Caviar	english.alarabiya.ne	2011-06-27	SA
4353	Record salmon count for River Tyne	BBC News	2011-06-26	UK
4354	Pompano Beach fishing captain cited for illegal possession of goliath grouper	sun-sentinel	2011-06-24	US
4355	Every Single Salmon Contains The Natural Chemical Tag	Underwatertimes	2011-06-23	UK
4356	High school football coach catches world record-sized 143lb catfish	Daily Mail	2011-06-21	US
4357	The Punishment Must Fit The Crime--Even For Hermaphroditic	underwatertimes	2011-06-15	UK
4358	Fluorescent fish glows to show feminising chemicals up	newscientist	2011-06-08	AU
4359	Monster Fish Researcher Zeb Hogan Named National Geographic Fellow	underwatertimes	2011-06-11	US
4360	Gonna need a second boat: Man catches 9½-foot bluefin tuna in 22-foot Grady-White off OBX coast	The Virginian-Pilot	2021-03-02	US
4361	Marine group calls for stricter fishing gear rules after right whale death	CBC News	2021-03-01	CA
4362	Australian scientist gets baby fish to bust a move to MC Hammer classic	theguardian	2021-03-03	AU
4363	Welsh Angler Catches World Record Giant Mekong Catfish	outdoorlife	2011-06-09	TH
4364	Unusual sturgeon gathering a casting call for Bay Area anglers	petethomasoutdoors	2011-06-08	US
4365	Fluorescent lizardfish, glowing reefs in Fiji	Mongabay.com	2011-06-06	FJ
4366	Male Desert Goby Fish - Put Courtship Before Childcare	Underwatertimes	2011-10-11	AU
4367	Lake Erie could harbor Asian carp	upi	2011-06-02	CA
4368	Bass Angler Robert Pearson To Literally Enjoy Home Cookin This Weekend	underwatertimes	2011-06-02	US
4369	Angler Teddy Carr Records Top-10 Finish In Weekend Bassmaster Tourney	underwatertimes	2011-05-17	US
4370	Upper Red Lake / A fish is a fish, but a minnow isn’t, court says	Pioneer Press	2011-04-11	US
4371	How to Catch a 1,000 Pound Fish	popularmechanics	2011-03-09	CA
4372	Cornish fisherman gives 'rarely seen' fish to aquarium	BBC News	2011-04-11	UK
4373	PHIL MORLOCK APPOINTED DIRECTOR OF CSIA/CNSF GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS	keepcanadafishing	2020-09-13	CA
4374	Salmon rod fishing catches at record high in Scotland	BBC News	2011-03-24	UK
4375	Russia's amateur fishermen protest new rules: report	Kommersant	2011-03-29	RU

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