Underwater Swarm Bots

Hey everyone!
Underwater swarm is a project under the CMU Robotics club. The goal of this project is to create small (from 3" to 9"), relatively cheap, underwater robots that allow underwater tasks without the use of large, expensive, existing underwater robots. Each robot may have a swappable bay for custom sensors such as camera, temperature, etc., along with fixed onboard sensors. Each robot will be autonomously controlled and will use Swarm Intelligence to share tasks and information among other robots and a home base. The applications of this project can include mapping, imaging, environmental monitoring, surveillance, and exploration.

The timeline of the project is first to develop or try existing communication devices that can effectively transfer and receive data wirelessly underwater. Then the robot will be designed and built around this research. After the first robot, other robots will be built and the code for the operation of the robots and swarm intelligence will be developed. Hence, our first goal will be only to focus on researching an effective way to communicate wirelessly underwater.

For this project to be successful, I am looking for ECE, MechE, CS, and students from other majors who are interested in underwater robots, autonomous robots, and/ or swarm robots. Remember this type of project has never been done at the level of low cost and use of multiple robots.