Robohub.org
 

Scaling up underwater swarmbot research from tabletop ‘aquarium’ to the Venice Lagoon (CoCoRo Video #50/52)


by
15 December 2015



share this:
CoCoRo's humble beginnings.

CoCoRo’s humble beginnings.

Our underwater swarm research started in a few cubic centimeters of water with some naked electronics on a table. Over the next three and a half years, our swarm increased by a factor of 40, and the size of our test waters increased by a factor of 40 million as we went from aquariums and pools, to ponds, rivers and lakes, and finally ending up in the salt water basin of the Livorno harbour. Quite a stretch for a small project!

Our new project, subCULTron, which extends the work of CoCoRo, will scale up the swarm size to 120+ robots, and will take place in an even larger body of water: the Venice Lagoon.

The EU-funded Collective Cognitive Robotics (CoCoRo) project has built a swarm of 41 autonomous underwater vehicles (AVs) that show collective cognition. Throughout 2015 – The Year of CoCoRo – we’ll be uploading a new weekly video detailing the latest stage in its development. 



tags: , , , , , , ,


Thomas Schmickl is an Associate Professor at Karl-Franzens University, Graz, Austria, and a lecturer at the University for Applied Sciences in St. Pölten, Austria.
Thomas Schmickl is an Associate Professor at Karl-Franzens University, Graz, Austria, and a lecturer at the University for Applied Sciences in St. Pölten, Austria.





Related posts :



Robot Talk Episode 134 – Robotics as a hobby, with Kevin McAleer

  21 Nov 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Kevin McAleer from kevsrobots about how to get started building robots at home.

ACM SIGAI Autonomous Agents Award 2026 open for nominations

  19 Nov 2025
Nominations are solicited for the 2026 ACM SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award.

Robot Talk Episode 133 – Creating sociable robot collaborators, with Heather Knight

  14 Nov 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Heather Knight from Oregon State University about applying methods from the performing arts to robotics.

CoRL2025 – RobustDexGrasp: dexterous robot hand grasping of nearly any object

  11 Nov 2025
A new reinforcement learning framework enables dexterous robot hands to grasp diverse objects with human-like robustness and adaptability—using only a single camera.

Robot Talk Episode 132 – Collaborating with industrial robots, with Anthony Jules

  07 Nov 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Anthony Jules from Robust.AI about their autonomous warehouse robots that work alongside humans.

Teaching robots to map large environments

  05 Nov 2025
A new approach could help a search-and-rescue robot navigate an unpredictable environment by rapidly generating an accurate map of its surroundings.



 

Robohub is supported by:




Would you like to learn how to tell impactful stories about your robot or AI system?


scicomm
training the next generation of science communicators in robotics & AI


 












©2025.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence