Throughout her summer time internship at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Olin Faculty of Engineering robotics undergraduate scholar Ivy Mahnke took a hands-on strategy to testing algorithms for underwater navigation. She first discovered herself engaged on underwater robotics as an intern at Woods Gap Oceanographic Establishment in 2024. Attracted by the chance to work on new issues and cutting-edge algorithm growth, I started an internship in 2025 with Lincoln Laboratory’s Superior Undersea Programs and Expertise Group.
Mahnke spent the summer time creating and troubleshooting algorithms that assist human divers and robotic automobiles work collectively to navigate underwater. The underwater atmosphere’s lack of conventional location aids, such because the International Positioning System (GPS), created navigation challenges that Manke and his leaders sought to beat. Her analysis within the lab culminated in a discipline check of the algorithm on an operational underwater car. Accompanying group workers to discipline check websites within the Atlantic Ocean, Charles River, and Lake Superior, Mahncke had the chance to see her software program in motion.
“One of many lead engineers on the undertaking left to go do one thing else, and he or she mentioned, ‘Here is my laptop computer, this is what it’s essential to do, and I belief you to do them.’ So I ended up going out on the water not simply as a reservist, however as one of many lead discipline testers,” Manke says. “I felt that my bosses noticed me as the subsequent era of engineers, each at Lincoln Laboratory and within the business at giant.”
“Ivy’s internship coincided with a sequence of rigorous discipline checks on the finish of an bold program,” mentioned Madeline Miller, Mahnke’s internship supervisor. “We figuratively threw her into the water, however she performed an integral position in our program’s skill to not solely keep afloat, however to fulfill a number of of our objectives.”
lincoln institute Summer research program It’s held from mid-Might to August. Purposes are actually being accepted.
Video by Tim Briggs/MIT Lincoln Laboratory | 2 minutes 59 seconds
