Caltech researchers learn from jellyfish to develop underwater bot
Summary
Led by John Dabiri, the Centennial Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, have been taking advantage of jellyfish’s natural ability to traverse and plumb the ocean, by outfitting them with electronics and prosthetic ‘hats’ with which they can carry small payloads on their journeys and report findings back. These jellyfish have to deal with the ebb and flow of the currents they encounter, but do not make decisions about how best to navigate to a destination and cannot be remotely controlled. Dabiri and his former graduate student Peter Gunnarson, now at Brown University, have developed a way to simplify that decision-making process and help a robot, or an augmented jellyfish, catch a ride on the vortices created by ocean currents rather than fighting them. Gunnarson built the CARL-Bot some years ago as part of work to begin incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into a bot’s navigation technique. The team then developed simple commands to help CARL detect a vortex rings relative location and then position itself to, in Gunnarsons words, "hop on and catch a ride basically for free across the tank."