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
4476	A fish was caught on camera attacking and eating a baby bird	CBC Radio	2021-02-15	CA
4477	Gender-Bending Fish Problem In Colorado Creek Mitigated By Treatment Plant Upgrade; 'A Canary In A Mine Shaft'	Underwatertimes	2010-06-21	US
4478	Sturgeon: On the edge of extinction	independent	2011-10-23	UK
4479	Scottish salmon scheme nets nature award	BBC News	2010-06-04	UK
4480	Angler lands monster catfish weighing in at a massive 250lb	Daily Mail	2010-06-04	UK
4481	Wyoming man earns rare ‘Ultimate Angler’ distinction after catching tenth trophy class fish	oilcity news	2021-02-10	US
4482	Gigantic freshwater fish from Amazon found in Caloosahatchee River	Fort Myers News-Press	2021-02-11	US
4483	Fish Swallows Eel In Bizarre Video - But There's More To It Than Meets The Eye	ndtv	2021-02-11	US
4484	Humans push a hulking fish with a chainsaw nose towards oblivion	Nature	2021-02-12	US
4485	Disabled fish gets special life jacket made to help him swim	nypost	2021-02-15	UK
4486	Scientists Set Sail To Study Bluefin Tuna Spawning Grounds In The Oil-Tainted Gulf	Underwatertimes	2010-05-19	CA
4487	First As Oregon Man Sentenced For 'In Stream Work', Habitat Alteration; 'Coho Salmon Are A Gift'	Underwatertimes	2010-04-20	US
4488	Salmon may have been too tired to navigate Whitehorse fish ladder, research suggests	CBC News	2021-02-16	CA
4489	Asian carp may be in Lake Michigan	CBC News	2010-03-24	CA
4490	Fish die as Ukrainian authorities empty reservoir	kyiv post	2010-03-16	UA
4491	'Chemical cocktail' caused fish mutations: report	The Sunshine Coast Daily	2010-03-15	AU
4492	Do fish have feelings too? It's a slippery question for science	daily mail	2010-03-08	CA
4493	Canada border now has its own exhibit at the Aquarium of Niagara	WGRZ	2021-02-22	US
4494	Charleston angler lands monster trout from wheelchair	wvgazettemail	2021-02-06	US
4495	Fish Use 'Secret' Ultraviolet Vision To Distinguish Between Species	underwatertimes	2010-02-28	AU
4496	Canal search locates no Asian carp	upi	2010-02-18	US
4497	Amid carp threat, a call to unhook	wsj	2010-02-17	CA
4498	UN Turns To Forensic Science To Help Combat Illegal Fishing; 'We Need To Push The Envelope'	Underwatertimes	2010-02-01	IT
4499	A nature walk on the Oyster River and some non-retention fishing	campbell river mirror	2019-10-11	CA
4500	Catching Pink Salmon	islandfishermanmagazine	2020-08-05	CA

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