The Year of CoCoRo Video #26/52: Magnetic target – four compartments

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. This video shows the agile, autonomous robot, Jeff, in a search and exploration task for a magnetic target. 

We constructed a fragmented habitat in a pool, providing four compartments separated by medium-high walls. One compartment contained a magnetic/metallic object, acting as a target. A Jeff robot performed a search pattern using its internal magnetic sensor to identify the target. Once it achieves this, it stops, sinks on top of the target and switches on its LEDs to mark the spot.

The video shows our experiments to see how many positive results were achievable in a row. The robot’s reliability, given that there is no optimized search function or higher-cognitive capability (no map, camera, memory or plan), is quite a surprise!

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.