Self-Reconfiguring Boats

Modular robotic boats which can assembly into marine structures.

Self-reconfiguring boats offer promise for a wide range of marine applications, including building temporary infrastructure, remote maintenance, search-and-rescue operations, environmental monitoring, and on-demand transportation. However, achieving autonomous self-reconfiguration on the water surface, even in two dimensions, remains challenging. Complex nonlinear hydrodynamics, disturbances from self-motion and neighboring robots, and environmental factors impose obstacles for successful autonomous behaviors. This project works on a group of miniature modular robotic boats, capable of self-assembling into physically connected structures, self-reconfiguring, and collectively traveling as larger assemblies via a hybrid coordination framework.

2026

  1. Self-Reconfigurable Boats.gif
    Self-Reconfiguring Modular Robotic Boats
    Wei Wang*, Niklas Hagemann*, Alejandro Gonzalez-Garcia*, and 2 more authors
    Nature Communications, 2026
    DOI Video
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    Distributed Motion Planning with Safety Guarantees for Self-Reconfiguring Robotic Boats
    Alejandro Gonzalez-Garcia, Wei Wang, Wei Xiao, and 4 more authors
    arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.20352, 2026
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