CoCoRo (Collective Cognitive Robots), swarm of autonomous underwater vehicles, Artificial Life Laboratory, University of Graz, Graz, Austria

https://youtu.be/0rMB9TRfkGw

TYOC#07/52: Lily Flocking by slimemold

Published on Feb 15, 2015

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The Year of CoCoRo 07/52: A group of Lily robots can achieve a coherent shoaling or flocking configuration by emitting and receiving pulsed light signals. Similar to slime mold or fireflies, such pulsed signals are relayed from one agent to the next, forming signal waves that move through the whole swarm. We use such waves to keep the swarm of Lily robots together as a group, to coordinate the swarm and to move it in a desired direction.

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https://youtu.be/W73oTADtnp8

TYOC#08/52: Lily Emergent Taxis

Published on Feb 22, 2015

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The Year of CoCoRo 08/52: A swarm of Lily robots can form a coherent group by exchanging light pulses in a slime-mold inspired way among the group members. By modulating the frequency of these signals the group can alter the path of the emerging blinking wave to turn the whole group towards the aggregation target. Such a target can be any form of gradient emitting source, regardless of the type of the emitted signal. We demonstrate this here by using a light source as a target.

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https://youtu.be/XzKNyseP4O8

TYOC#09/52: Jeff in the water current

Published on Mar 1, 2015

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The Year of CoCoRo 09/52: In this video we generate some water currents and turbulences by using a water hose in our outdoor pool. The video shows our first tests of the Jeff robot performed under such conditions (performed in summer 2013 and spring 2014). Those tests clearly indicated that the maneuverability of the robot (steering, forward drive) is strong enough to compensate for currents and drifts up to approximately 1m/sec. In those days we were very happy to realize such impressive capabilities for such a small robot, as this maneuverability is a prerequisite for the good performance in an underwater swarm under out-of-the lab conditions (large outside tanks, lazy river arms, ponds, lakes).

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https://youtu.be/nr3Cx5e8Lm8

TYOC#10/52: Feeding Jeff with magnets

Published on Mar 8, 2015

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The Year of CoCoRo 10/52: In this video we again generate water currents and turbulences by using a water hose in our outdoor pool. By radio-frequency control we navigate a Jeff robot remotely in those currents. To test the precision of the steering under these conditions we use some small magnets in our hands as targets that have to be picked up by the Jeff robot. Thus it looks like we feed the robot with magnets :-)

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https://youtu.be/C3WT1DdWx0M

TYOC#11/52: Livorno Out Of Lab

Published on Mar 30, 2015

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The Year of CoCoRo 11/52: This video summarizes all out-of-the-lab activities in which we tested our robots (Lily and Jeff). There will be more detailed videos following throughout this year showing some of those activities more specifically. The activities shown here show autonomous robots in larger outdoor pools, ponds, lakes, rivers and ocean harbours. They act there either alone (e.g. as autonomous underwater camera agents) or in smaller groups (swarms).

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https://youtu.be/esn5ZkrgGos

TYOC#12/52: Fun with Jeff in the pool

Published on Mar 22, 2015

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The Year of CoCoRo 12/52: One day in early 2014, at one of those long workshops, we stayed at a hotel that had a large and deep outside pool. It was a nice day in Italy, so what else could we do than taking a JEFF robot in autonomous driving mode to this pool and have some fun with it. It didn’t take long and more and more hotel guests gathered and watched. Special applause to Vega & Finn, the kids of the project coordinator, for helping with the filming (above and under the water), catching the robot and rescuing it sometimes from the ground after we pushed the robot beyond its limits.

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https://youtu.be/X8Nbdqh1kss

TYOC#13/52 Lilycam in Nature EXTRA

Published on Mar 29, 2015

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The Year of CoCoRo 13/52: Lily is an autonomously diving robot. After we attached an underwater camera onto of it, it became an autonomously driving camera agent. We used this „Lily-Cam“ to look into the little fishing ponds that we have at our Zoological Department. The look below the surface offered a fascinating glimpse of the underwater world, including „algae forrests“, fish and other water organisms.

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https://youtu.be/qJ6LDPirR-U

TYOC#14/52: LilyCam in a Lake EXTRA

Published on Apr 5, 2015

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The Year of CoCoRo 14/52: After our successful application of „Lily-Cam“ in our small ponds, we went further. At several lovely places at Styria (Austria) we took a look below the water surface and encountered beautiful and pittoresque landscapes, fish and even diving ducks.

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https://youtu.be/5dNxxtBj5mA

TYOC#15/52 TRAILER LilyCam in a wild river

Published on Apr 12, 2015

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The Year of CoCoRo 15/52: There are not only beautiful lakes in Austria. There are also wild rivers and creeks. After „Lily-Cam“ did its job in the lakes, we threw it also into a fast whitewater river. We were lucky to catch it downhill after some minutes and the robot survived this adventure. However, our engineers, who have also to constantly maintain and repair the robots, didn’t like to see such movies ;-)

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https://youtu.be/TQRKYHQvtgU

TYOC#16/52: JeffCam in a Lake

Published on Apr 19, 2015

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The Year of CoCoRo 16/52: Jeff is much more agile and powerful then Lily. So mounting a camera ontop of an autonomous Jeff robot produced an even better autonomous camera agent. After some preliminary tests and tuning in a pool, we went to an Italian lake to see how it looks down there below the surface.

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