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
4551	One Million Dollar 1st Prize in US Amateur Fishing Tournament	fishncanada	2021-02-08	US
4552	Late ice cramps anglers' appetite, research of crucial fish	CTV News	2021-02-15	CA
4553	Pandemic triggers ‘widespread upheaval’ in global fisheries and aquaculture	un.org	2021-02-02	GY
4554	Common Fish Species Has 'Human' Ability To Learn; 'Brain Size Isn't Everything'	Underwatertimes	2009-07-16	US
4555	Fish Show Evolution Can Occur In Less Than Ten Years	Underwatertimes	2009-07-11	US
4556	Hatchery Fish May Hurt Efforts To Sustain Wild Salmon Runs; 'The Data Are Now Pretty Clear'	Underwatertimes	2009-07-10	US
4557	‘Big day for UK seas’ as bottom trawling ban in four protected areas proposed	the guardian	2021-02-02	UK
4558	Musquash River may again be home to hydro power	CBC News	2015-09-04	CA
4559	USGS, ERDC Scientists installing experimental underwater acoustic deterrent system to stop spread of invasive Asian carp	wqad	2021-02-04	US
4560	The 495 species that got away for Sussex angler	theargus	2009-05-11	UK
4561	Brisbane Scientist Discovers New Species Of Fish; 'A Most Exciting Discovery'	Underwatertimes	2009-04-29	AU
4562	CIBA achieves breakthrough in captive breeding of grey mullet fish	the hindu	2021-01-29	IN
4563	Call to modernise, not expand, Scottish fishing fleet	bbc	2021-01-29	UK
4564	Metre-long sturgeon discovered in Brierfield garden centre spring clean		2009-04-16	UK
4565	The bizarre South American armoured fish found in a Leicestershire canal	Daily Mail	2009-03-29	US
4566	Pharmaceuticals Discovered In Fish In Five Major US Cities; 'Highest Concentrations In Fish Livers'	Underwatertimes	2009-03-25	US
4567	Blind Fish's Sensors May Spur Development Of New Generation Of Active Sonar	Underwatertimes	2009-03-24	US
4568	Snakehead fish now in Alabama? Sounds like it's a possibility	AL	2009-03-23	US
4569	Rare 'funny-looking' lumpsucker fish found in Cornwall	Cornwall News	2021-02-05	UK
4570	A Single Altered Gene Can Make Fish Fins More Like Limbs	smithsonianmag	2021-02-04	US
4571	Human-generated Sounds May Kill Fish	Underwatertimes	2009-03-12	US
4572	Vampire fish found in stream in northern Burma	Mirror.co.uk	2009-03-11	UK
4573	Invasive species are greatest threat to Northwest salmon, report says	The Oregonian	2009-03-05	US
4574	Lake Michigan Fish Populations Threatened By Thriving Junk Food Mussel, Decline Of Nutritious Tiny Shrimp	Underwatertimes	2009-02-19	US
4575	Two-headed fish probe finds no pesticide in water	abc	2009-02-18	US

182 of [217 - pages.]