Engineering news





Scientists from an initiative of seven European research institutes, are creating the ‘world’s largest’ population of autonomous robots, that could help improve the ability to obtain and process data for environmental monitoring.

To cope with the harshness of the lagoon environment, the researchers working for the project, called Submarine Cultures Perform Long-Term Robotic Exploration Of Unconventional Environmental Niches (Subcultron), have designed three types of robots. The artificial mussels’ (aMussels) mission is to lay on the seabed to monitor the natural habitat, including biological agents like algae, bacterial incrustation or fish, at “intermediate depths”, the artificial fish (aFish) swim in the water and exchange data and information with aMussels and artificial lily pads (aPads), flat floating devices on the surface of the water, act as the main points of contact with the human world, and provide energy to the entire system.

The project aims to create a system, “shaped into a society of autonomous agents”, which are engineered to perform a given set of operations, but also will be able to learn from the environment and take decisions based on their experience and understanding.

“We’re actually trying to establish a robotic society”, said Thomas Schmickl, head of the artificial intelligence Lab of the Karl-Franzens University of Graz, Austria, which is coordinating the study. “Our robots would not just carry out operations for which they are programmed or trained, but they would also develop social skills, learning how to communicate and interact with other robots, as well as with the surrounding environment.”

Schmickl said: “In a few words, what we are trying to do is to go beyond the logic of individual complex machines, like many underwater robots are today, to deploy a collective cognitive system with high potential for learning and self-adaptation. This might actually prove an effective approach to work in marine environments which are very dynamic and require adaptive capacities to be explored in their complexity”.

To build the underwater robotic society, the researchers are working to develop sensors, bio-inspired algorithms simulating the structure of hives under the water, and energy harvesting in aquatic environments.

The researchers said that the systems like the one being tested by Subcultron could help improve the ability to obtain and process data for environmental monitoring.