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
4726	Study: Great Lakes' Salmon Failing To Thrive Because of 'Junk Food' Diet	Underwatertimes	2006-05-21	US
4727	Warming Swiss rivers threaten fish stocks	swissinfo	2020-12-31	CH
4728	European chub named Fish of the Year	swissinfo	2021-01-02	CH
4729	First as Brit Pair's Carp Conquers Japanese Koi Show; 'Our Fish is Superb'	Underwatertimes	2006-02-04	UK
4730	Researcher: 'Two-Mouthed' Trout Caused by Injury, Not Genetics	underwatertimes	2006-02-08	US
4731	Biologists dispute fish farm study that says farmed salmon can coexist with real salmon	alaskareport	2006-08-03	CA
4732	Study: Protein Myglobin Key to Common Carp's Ability to Survive with Little Oxygen	Underwatertimes	2006-06-01	UK
4733	Skipper nets 'miracle' swordfish	bbc	2006-08-08	UK
4734	Consumer Reports: Pregnant Women Should Not Eat Canned Tuna; 'It's Prudent'	Underwatertimes	2006-06-05	US
4735	Deep-spied Fish: Atlantic expeditions uncover secret sex life of deep-sea nomads	Underwatertimes	2006-02-21	US
4736	Research: Evidence of Human-like 'Altruistic' Behavior in Fish Documented; 'Pretty Amazing'	Underwatertimes	2006-06-22	AU
4737	Firms pay $62K in reparations for fisheries violation	squamishchief	2011-06-24	CA
4738	Новая стратегия российских рыболовов заставит японцев забыть о Курилах...	politpuzzle	2021-01-08	RU
4739	Washington State Angler Lands Massive 405-lb, 7 1/2-foot Halibut; 'I Just Kept Reeling, Reeling, Reeling'	underwatertimes	2006-08-25	US
4740	After many years, Utah Lake's carp removal project starting to see some desired results	Daily Herald	2017-06-19	US
4741	What to do with 7 million fish	phys.org	2006-03-23	US
4742	Beached tuna find 'very unusual'	bbc	2006-08-30	CA
4743	Scientists: Some Cod Like It Hot, Some Not	Underwatertimes	2006-04-03	UK
4744	State's freshwater fish tainted, study says	seattlepi	2006-03-19	US
4745	Contaminants May Play Role in Apparent Decline of White Sturgeon in Columbia River	Underwatertimes	2006-04-06	US
4746	Fish larvae don't swim well because they lack control	underwatertimes	2006-04-03	UK
4747	Male Bass Across Region Found to Be Bearing Eggs	Washington Post	2006-09-06	US
4748	Carp Found to Hold Its Breath for Months	Underwatertimes.com	2006-04-07	NO
4749	Scientists worry B.C. hatchery fish threatening endangered wild chinook	nanaimobulletin	2021-01-02	CA
4750	Puyallup tribe suing Electron Dam citing fish kills	wral	2020-12-31	US

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