The robots made at MIT's Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Laboratory explore beneath the surface of the ocean without a pilot or remote control.
At the Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Laboratory researchers create robotic submarines capable of exploring the ocean floor, and performing a variety of tasks.
Visiting the Second Fridays program at the MIT Museum led to an interview at the AUV Lab, part of the MIT Sea Grant College Program.
This story contains a surprise ending.
If you could build a robot -say in your garage- how could you get it to run autonomously, acting on its own?
"The software that we use on this vehicle was developed in our lab," AUV Electrical Engineer Seth Newberg said. "It's now maintained by [Dr] Paul Newman's group, at Oxford. It's for autonomous underwater vehicles, but actually for any robotic vehicle system ground vehicle, surface water vehicle, or unmanned aerial vehicle."
"It's a general purpose software suite that allows you to collect navigational data from sensors, integrate and merge those data, and then apply commands."
Pay attention to the end of the video, then come back and check out the website Seth mentions here.
