Hart Nautical Gallery

Deep Frontiers: Ocean Engineering at MIT

A world leader in developing engineering solutions for the ocean sciences, MIT's Center for Ocean Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering devotes its human and technological resources to developing systems for the wise use and preservation of our ocean planet.

Formidable and inhospitable to terrestrial beings, Earth's oceans are home to ninety percent of our planet's living creatures. Yet, we of the ten percent minority who live on land know very little about the ocean and its inhabitants – especially when compared to our knowledge of the rest of the planet. The engineers and scientists at Center for Ocean Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering have devoted their careers to enhancing our understanding of the ocean world.

Highlights of the exhibition include:

• Multimedia retrospective of the innovative Odyssey-class of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) capable of diving to 6000 meters.
• Sea Squirt – the first AUV built by MIT Sea Grant's AUV Lab.
• Robot II, a rare early experimental AUV developed at MIT in the mid-1970s.
• A mock-up of RoboTuna, MIT's experimental swimming robot modeled after a bluefin tuna.
• An Odyssey IIB AUV assembled from original parts of earlier AUV designs now superceded. This display reveals all basic internal components of the last AUV in this class.
• A laser disk with programs relating to Odyssey-class AUVs involved in oceanographic research, tank testing of RoboTuna and Proteus, and computer simulations of swimming fish.