Final Project

Robot First Aid

Over the last fifteen years, my students and I have designed and built a number of underwater robots. Most of them have been biomimetic or at least bioinspired. They have explored the various propulsion techniques used by fish and other aquatic animals to get around under water.

The years have however not been kind to our little robotic machines. Many did not really survive the move from England to Germany, others have been the victims of well-meaning but unqualified students’ attempts to “repair” them. Still others were never really fully functional when they were first “completed” - they had to be good enough to pass the course requirements, but that was often a far stretch from really able to survive in the wild.

My FabAcademy Final Project will therefore to put these little guys back on their feet, upgrade their electronics, and get them (back) to a state where they can explore at least our testing tank, if not the lakes and canals around the university. They’ll become the living part of the Submarine Museum we’re building in the lab.

The Robots

I’ll introduce the various robots here as the semester goes on. As a teaser, though, here are their names and some pix:

Jellybot

Gymnobot

Babylon 2

RoboMola

RoboPuffin

Hawthorne