Screenshot from video exhibiting underwater robotic car. Credit score: Tim Briggs/MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
Throughout a summer time internship at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Ivy Mahncke, an undergraduate pupil of robotics engineering at Olin School of Engineering, took a hands-on strategy to testing algorithms for underwater navigation. She first found her love for working with underwater robotics as an intern on the Woods Gap Oceanographic Establishment in 2024. Drawn by the possibility to deal with new issues and cutting-edge algorithm improvement, Mahncke started an internship with Lincoln Laboratory’s Superior Undersea Techniques and Expertise Group in 2025.
Mahncke spent the summer time growing and troubleshooting an algorithm that will assist a human diver and robotic car collaboratively navigate underwater. The shortage of conventional localization aids — such because the International Positioning System, or GPS — in an underwater atmosphere posed challenges for navigation that Mahncke and her mentors sought to beat. Her work within the laboratory culminated in area exams of the algorithm on an operational underwater car. Accompanying group employees to area take a look at websites within the Atlantic Ocean, Charles River, and Lake Superior, Mahncke had the chance see her software program in motion in the true world.
“One of many lead engineers on the undertaking had cut up off to go do different work. And he or she stated, ‘Right here’s my laptop computer. Listed below are the issues that you could do. I belief you to go do them.’ And so I acquired to be out on the water as not simply an additional pair of arms, however as one of many lead area testers,” Mahncke says. “I actually felt that my supervisors noticed me as the longer term era of engineers, both at Lincoln Lab or simply within the broader trade.”
Says Madeline Miller, Mahncke’s internship supervisor: “Ivy’s internship coincided with a rigorous collection of area exams on the finish of an bold program. We figuratively threw her proper within the water, and she or he not solely floated, however performed an integral half in our program’s skill to hit a number of attain objectives.”
Lincoln Laboratory’s summer time analysis program runs from mid-Could to August. Purposes are actually open.
Video by Tim Briggs/MIT Lincoln Laboratory | 2 minutes, 59 seconds
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