By Javier Chagoya

NPS combat systems engineering student Lt. David Armandt, left, describes how the projects in the university's Department of Physics are advancing robotic mobility to Canadian Forces Senior Engineer and Task Leader Derek Burnett, center, and Lockheed Martin's Mission Systems and Training Engineer Joe Cuschieri, right, during a campus tour hosted by the Consortium for Robotics and Unmanned Systems Education and Research (CRUSER), May 26. Burnett and Cuschieri were participants of the 12th Annual Mine Warfare Technology Symposium, held in a nearby conference center May 24-26.

"In addition to building robots that can go from an ocean environment to crawling onto a beach, we also look at high level cooperative robot behavior. We take a few robots and have them execute a task together, given a couple overarching, physics-based rules. In this way, an operator is relieved of the burden of controlling the individual movements of each robot, and can instead focus on the bigger picture," said Armandt.

CRUSER hosted the lab tours for both symposium attendees and campus staff, along with their families, and was coordinated by the consortium's Faculty Associate Lyla Englehorn.

"CRUSER Expo 2016 was designed to showcase NPS' research in robotics and autonomy for government and industry professionals, and is an example of our ever-expanding collaborative forums," said Englehorn. "Visitors from the 12th International Mine Warfare Technology Symposium were invited to see how CRUSER gathers diverse disciplines in a collective that produces emerging benefits for all. In addition, the NPS campus community was invited to get a better understanding of the research they work to support each and every day."