Bruce is an autonomous and versatile emergency response robo-boat that was built in 2016 by a team of seven QUT students to assist maritime search and rescue respondents.
The robo-boat competed in the Maritime RobotX Challenge in Hawaii and came second, beating 12 university teams from five countries.
The competition was designed to inspire advances in the field of marine robotics.
Bruce had to complete a range of autonomous tasks that had real-world applications for emergency response and environmental management.
Some of the tasks involved avoiding obstacles while locating particular objects, and locating acoustic pingers underwater, which have obvious relevance for search and research scenarios.
From an environmental perspective, the technologies that were developed to locate shapes on the seafloor could, for instance, be adapted to help autonomous boats map the extent of coral bleaching events.
Bruce also had some extra robotic support to put him in good stead, built from scratch by TeamQUT – a submarine called George which was Bruce’s eyes and ears underwater, and Gusto the racquetball launcher.
Lead Researcher: Matthew Dunbabin