Bubbles-Swarm Micro Surface Robots for Underwater Inspection

Manual inspection of underwater facilities, such as those used to store spent fuel or fish farming, is costly and labour-intensive. Therefore, autonomous robots can significantly assist in continuously monitoring these facilities. A swarm robotic system will be more efficient and cost-effective than traditional underwater inspection techniques and expensive remotely operated vehicles. This paper introduces a new swarm robotic platform, Bubble, that can move on water surfaces for underwater inspections. It is a low-cost and open-source micro-robot that enables inspection of extensive underwater facilities, e.g., fuel storage ponds and similar environments, using hundreds of Bubbles. In this work, we used six real robots to implement a swarm exploration for visually inspecting a simulated fuel storage facility. Several scenarios were conducted to test the robots' functionality and collective motion performance. The overall result demonstrated the vast potential for applying Bubbles in various applications.