Gliding Robotic Fish for Mobile Sampling of Aquatic Environments

Aquatic ecosystems and processes exhibit a high degree of spatial and temporal heterogeneity, which presents significant challenges for their monitoring. In this paper we report a novel underwater robot, called gliding robotic fish, as an emerging platform for mobile sensing in aquatic environments that can potentially provide high spatiotemporal coverage. The robot represents a hybrid of an underwater glider and a robotic fish, and is capable of exploiting gliding to achieve energy-efficient locomotion while using a fish-like active tail to achieve high maneuverability. Preliminary field-test results are presented, where the robot was used to sample the Kalamazoo River and the Wintergreen Lake in Michigan for concentrations of crude oil and harmful algae, respectively.