The UNEXMIN (Underwater Explorer for Flooded Mines) project is almost one year old. After a busy first year of work, UNEXMIN is on-schedule to deliver the first mechanical UX-1 prototype. Jussi Aaltonen, from TUT (Tampere University of Technology), leaders of WP1 – Robotic Functions Validations, talks about what has been done over the past year concerning his team’s work in UNEXMIN’s development scene.

Meet the submersibles and seaborne machines helping to monitor climate change in our oceans. Originally posted on Horizon: The EU research and innovation magazine.

Dan Gettinger updates us on the recent developments in underwater drone technology.

Our penultimate video features the initial “Big Vision” trailer we produced at the beginning of this project. The video showcases the basic components of the robotic system we targeted (surface station, relay chain, ground swarm) and how we imagined our collective of underwater robots forming coherent swarms.

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!

During the past year we have shown many swarm algorithms in various experiments. The spotlight was always on the Lily and the Jeff robots. However, there is now another star in the team and this trailer is dedicated to this special agent: the base station!

Most of the videos from The Year of CoCoRo were shot during workshops we held throughout the project. These workshops, which were usually focussed on one or several specific demonstrators, were what drove our international team of collaborators to implement mechanical hardware, electronics and software into working installations. This form of workshop-driven development proved to be very successful, and by the end of the project we were able to show 17 working final demonstrators that show the versatility of robot swarms. 

It’s not easy to bring a swarm of underwater robots and run live experiments at a consumer electronic show!

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. This week’s video shows an autonomous swarm of underwater robots coordinating their motion to form coherent shoals.

According to the Autonomous Undersea Vehicle Applications Center, a non-profit industry advocacy organization, there are 251 unique configurations of unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) in service today, including 144 different vehicle platforms. That number is likely to grow in the coming years as the technology improves. Here’s what you need to know about them …

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. This week’s video demonstrates autonomous shoaling that can also be controlled.

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. This week’s video shows Lily robots individually demonstrating behavior to enable coherent global swarming.

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. This week’s video shows an on-table experiment in which two Jeff robots dynamically choose between blue-light and  radio-frequency communication,

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 CooRo – we’ll be uploading a new weekly video detailing the latest stage in its development. This week’s video shows a collection of algorithms and communication channels that we explored to coordinate robots in murky, turbid waters.

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 CooRo – we’ll be uploading a new weekly video detailing the latest stage in its development. In this week’s video we offered the swarm targets of different quality or size.