Bioinspired Marine Robots

I have an ongoing project to design, build, and deploy aquatic robots. Like many groups, we are chasing the concept of biomimetic marine robots. While this is as cool and fun as it sounds, we are not using biological forms just to make robots look like animals. The primary goal is to narrow the gap between existing man-made machines and the amazing physical capabilities of animals (see this amazing review article from Frank Fish to learn more about this particular topic). Currently, our primary research interest is in understanding how to use flippers. Thus, the most exciting robot that we currently work with in this area is inspired by the sea turtle.

The project has several interrelated goals. First, as implied above, we are interested in narrowing the performance gap between man-made oceanic robots and animals. This is the area we have made the least progress on, but it is our most active area currently. Second, we are interested in enabling such robots to perform autonomous missions analogous to those currently performed by classic thruster-driven AUVs. This is the topic of our recent preprint. Third and finally, like many marine robotics researchers, we see the potential for biomimetic robots to allow for low disturbance marine environment exploration - by moving like an animal and keeping the noise down, we believe these robots might allow for stealthier observation of what goes on under the sea. To that end, we recently took the robot to St. John, USVI, for the first field deployment of our robot. Check out our video on YouTube (https://youtu.be/T8ybqTUFuIA) and check out our latest preprint, which characterizes, on a preliminary basis, the disturbance of of our robot compared to a traditional AUV.

Publications