BluE · Bioinspired Legged Underwater robots for Ecological monitoring and Exploration
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2023-09-01 → 2025-08-31
- EU contribution
- €165,313
- Participants
- 3
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Bioinspired Legged Underwater robots for Ecological monitoring and Exploration
The BluE project advanced the integration of bioinspired legged robots into marine ecological monitoring, addressing the growing need for sustainable, low-impact ocean observation systems. It directly supports EU priorities under the Mission Restore our Ocean and Waters, the European Green Deal, and the development of the Digital Twin of the Ocean. The project focused on SILVER2, a legged underwater robot designed to move on the seabed, where traditional propeller-driven vehicles face limitations. BluE achieved major technological progress through the complete refurbishment of SILVER2, including a new waterproof actuator canister, an integrated power and control board with early-leak detection, and full migration to ROS 2. These developments led to the creation of the Open Toolkit for Underwater Robotics, a publicly available hardware–software platform that lowers entry barriers for underwater robotic research and education. BluE also validated a new mobile–fixed observatory approach by coupling a crawler robot with the OBSEA cabled observatory for autonomous visual monitoring, demonstrating a scalable method for benthic ecological observations. In parallel, it delivered the first open simulation environments for underwater legged robots (silver2_gz and silver2_stonefish), enabling realistic modeling and reinforcement learning of underwater locomotion and control. The project combined robotics, electronics, and marine ecology training, fostering multidisciplinary expertise and new collaborations. Its open-science approach ensures all results—software, hardware, and datasets—are freely accessible, promoting reproducibility and sustainable innovation. By pioneering legged, low-disturbance robots for seabed exploration, BluE contributes to Europe’s transition toward intelligent and environmentally responsible ocean monitoring technologies.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
A deeper understanding of marine ecosystems is crucial to enforce protective actions and promote a sustainable exploitation of the oceans’ resources. Adequate spatial and temporal coverage of data can be obtained by resorting to a network of fixed and mobile platforms to combine the advantages of different types of units. Existing mobile platforms, such as autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and seabed crawlers, present intrinsic limitations when operating in the benthic environment which can be overcome by underwater legged robots (ULRs). ULRs, with arthropod-like versatile locomotion, are not much affected by currents, drain little power while keeping a fixed position, exhibit a gentler interaction with the seabed and produce a lower acoustic signature in comparison with propeller driven vehicles. The BluE project aims at bringing the advantages of bioinspired ULRs in ecological monitoring applications by combining their capabilities with those of fixed and mobile platforms. This aim will be pursued by (1) demonstrating tethered integration of a bioinspired ULR with a fixed monitoring platform (i.e., underwater cabled observatory) to perform visual census of the ictic community, and by (2) implementing a collaboration between a bioinspired ULR and an AUV to demonstrate obstacle free navigation. To undertake this research, I will join the Marine Science Institute of the Spanish National Research Council, world’s expert in the ecology of the Mediterranean Sea. Additionally, I will carry out two secondments at the University of Girona and at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia to receive training on mobile and fixed monitoring platforms and gain access to unique facilities such as the AUV Girona500 and the OBSEA cabled observatory. This project will contribute to the development of new tools for underwater operations with potential impact in scientific and commercial sectors and will establish the proponent as a prominent researcher in underwater robotics.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101061354
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e50bce4a3b&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e51fe9bb33&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union