Bio-inspired Underwater Teams

Utilize the fundamental understanding of hydrodynamic benefits from underwater vehicles swimming in proximity to each other to develop and demonstrate a design for an underwater vehicle team optimized for range, endurance, speed and quietness. The design should be based on rigorous analysis and leverage results from recent computational and experimental fluid dynamics investigations that have shown signifcant gains in efficiency resulting from group swimming. The design should also leverage new vehicle design spaces that result from the platform being unmanned and are available that might include novel propulsors (for example, fins, tails or other bio-inspired mechanisms) that utilize unsteady propulsion, body shape and body deformation. This STTR will provide increased capabilities for UUV teams based on the technology push from the fundamental understanding we now have of how hydrodynamic benefits of underwater swimming in groups.

The full objective, description, Phase I, II and III requirements and evaluation criteria are in the official topic on DSIP.