Demo: H2020 subCULTron project – first swarm tests

Demo: H2020 subCULTron project – first swarm tests

subCULTron aims for achieving long-term autonomy in a learning, self-regulating, self-sustaining underwater society/culture of robots in a high-impact application area: Venice, Italy. Our heterogeneous system consists of 3 different robot types: artificial mussels (aMussels) on the sea-ground, artificial lily pads (aPads) on the water surface, and artificial fish (aFish) that move/monitor/explore the environment and exchange info with the mussels and lily pads. aMussels monitor the natural habitat, while each aPad serves as a charging and transportation station for aMussels and a connection to the outer world. The project aims to construct 120 aMussels, 5 aPads, and 25 aFish. After two years of the project all aMussels and aPads have been constructed (a swarm of 125 robots). We bring a smaller part of the swarm to BTS (~15 robots) and demonstrate its operation on-site. Along with a demonstration of autonomous and manual operation of individual robot units, we are going to show their cooperation – aPads detecting, navigating and docking to aMussels autonomously, enabling transportation and charging of aMussels. Further, we show reactive underwater swarm communication, in particular aMussels accepting acoustic commands from aPads and acting accordingly.

Website: subcultron.eu

Demonstration is divided in three groups which will rotate every hour together with other demonstrations and tutorial hands-on: