Autonomous
robot maps ship hulls for mines
Algorithms
enable robot to navigate and view propellers and other complex structures.
(June 17, 2012) For years, the U.S. Navy has employed human divers, equipped with sonar
cameras, to search for underwater mines attached to ship hulls. The Navy has
also trained dolphins and sea lions to search for bombs on and around vessels.
While animals can cover a large area in a short amount of time, they are costly
to train and care for, and don’t always perform as expected.
In the last few years, Navy scientists, along with research institutions around the world, have been engineering resilient robots for minesweeping and other risky underwater missions. The ultimate goal is to design completely autonomous robots that can navigate and map cloudy underwater environments — without any prior knowledge of those environments — and detect mines as small as an iPod.
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