The EU-funded Collective Cognitive Robotics (CoCoRo) project has built a swarm of 41 autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that show collective cognition. Throughout 2015 – The Year of CoCoRo – we will be uploading a new weekly video detailing the latest stage in its development. One day in early 2014, at one of those long workshops, we stayed at a hotel that had a large and deep outside pool. It was a nice day in Italy, so what else could we do than taking a JEFF robot in autonomous driving mode to this pool and have some fun with it?
It didn’t take long and more and more hotel guests gathered and watched. Special applause to Vega and Finn, the kids of the project coordinator, for helping with the filming (above and under the water), catching the robot and rescuing it sometimes from the ground after we pushed the robot beyond its limits.