UW Marine Robotics Laboratory

Aquatic environments are complex, unpredictable, and often difficult for people to access. Robots working in these environments must do more than navigate—they must adapt to uncertainty, interact safely with their surroundings, and collaborate to accomplish tasks beyond the capabilities of a single machine.

At the Marine Robotics Lab (MRL), we develop intelligent aquatic robots that connect three essential elements: adaptive brains, capable bodies, and coordinated collectives.

  • Adaptive Brains: We integrate learning with model-based control and estimation to create robots that perform reliably and adapt in uncertain, unstructured environments.
  • Capable Bodies: Inspired by biological systems, we design unconventional robots that use their morphology and physical dynamics to improve aquatic locomotion, sensing, control, and efficiency.
  • Coordinated Collectives: We develop autonomous robotic swarms that cooperate through shape formation, self-assembly and collective manipulation—enabling them to build structures and execute complex real-world tasks together.

We envision a future in which teams of intelligent aquatic robots can operate reliably across dynamic environments—advancing scientific discovery, strengthening critical infrastructure, and helping us better understand and protect the natural world.

News

  • 2026/08    Theodore LengKong and Yuyan Tang joined our lab as graduate students. Welcome!
  • 2026/08    Sicheng successfully defended his master’s thesis. Congratulations!
  • 2026/07    Our paper, “Self-Reconfiguring Modular Robotic Boats,” was officially published in Nature Communications and featured in MIT News.
  • 2026/06    Our team recently traveled to Vienna, Austria, to attend the 2026 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), where we presented three papers. These achievements were featured in a news story by the College. Even more exciting, one of our papers, “A Novel Bio-Inspired Fish Robot with Tunable Stiffness via Particle Jamming,” was selected as a finalist for the conference’s Best Paper Award.
  • 2026/04    Congratulations to Kevin, Michael, and Zhiheng on the acceptance of their paper “Design and Control of Centimeter-Scale Reconfigurable Aquatic Modular Robots” in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.
  • 2026/03     Prof. Wang delivered an invited talk titled “Toward Advanced Autonomy in Complex Aquatic Environments” at the School of Engineering, Brown University, on March 31.
  • 2026/03     One paper titled “Self-Reconfiguring Modular Robotic Boats” was accepted in Nature Communications. This work presents FloatForm, a modular robotic boat system that enables autonomous self-assembly, self-reconfiguration, and collective motion on water through a hybrid coordination framework, advancing scalable and robust robotic construction in aquatic environments.
  • 2026/01      Three papers from MRL have been accepted for presentation at ICRA 2026. Congratulations to Jack for his work “A Novel Bio-Inspired Fish Robot with Tunable Stiffness via Particle Jamming,” Jiayi for “Design and Dynamic Modeling of a Flying Fish Robot with Experimental Validation,” Sicheng for “A Manta Ray Robot with Tunable Two-Dimensional Wing Stiffness.” We’re proud of their outstanding work and excited to share these results with the robotics community at ICRA 2026 in Vienna, Austria, this June!
  • 2025/11        Congratulations to Shuoqi on the acceptance of his latest paper in Soft Robotics! The work is titled ‘A Stiffness-Tunable Soft Actuator with Adjustable Jamming for Dexterous Manipulation.
  • 2025/11        Prof. Wang delivered an invited talk titled “Toward Advanced Autonomy in Complex Aquatic Environments” at Upenn GRASP SFI on November 19th.
  • 2025/11        Prof. Wang delivered an invited talk titled “Toward Advanced Autonomy in Complex Aquatic Environments” at the UIUC Robotics Seminar on November 14th.
  • 2025/10      Our team recently traveled to Hangzhou, China, for IROS 2025. Arturo and Edward presented their research on learning-based MPC control of marine robots, while Prof. Wang co-organized the ‘2nd Workshop on RoboTwin: Reciprocal Studies Between Biology and Robotics’.
  • 2025/05     Three papers were accepted to the 2025 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2025). Two of them are from my research group—congratulations to Arturo and Zhiheng! The third is a collaborative effort with researchers from MIT and KU Leuven.
  • 2025/05     Our team participated in ICRA 2025 in Atlanta, where Kevin presented his work on the MicroASV platform and Jack presented his research on a hybrid soft pneumatic and tendon-actuated finger. Additionally, Prof. Wang delivered an invited talk at the Amphibious Robotics workshop.
  • 2025/04     Happy to share our new paper in Science Robotics, led by PI Liang Li from Max Planck Institute. We demonstrate how virtual reality can be used to reverse-engineer sensorimotor control and apply it to swarm robot pursuit—achieving performance on par with model predictive control (MPC).
  • 2025/04      We showcase our robots to middle school students and the public at Engineering EXPO 2025.
  • 2025/01      Two papers were accepted by the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
  • 2024/11        We are seeking 1 PhD student in Control and Autonomy of Marine Robots, Bioinspired Robotics, Collective Robotics, etc., for the upcoming admissions cycle (Fall 2025); Deadline: 12/15/2024. Please visit our Opportunities page for more information.
  • 2024/08      Dr. Wang was appointed as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Field Robotics.
  • 2024/05      Dr. Wang co-organized a workshop called “Bioinspired Robotics and Robotics for Biology” at the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Yokohama, Japan.
  • 2024/04      We showcase our robots to middle school students and the public at Engineering EXPO 2024.
  • 2024/01      One paper “Robust Model Predictive Control with Control Barrier Functions for Autonomous Surface Vessels” was accepted by the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
  • 2024/01      Dr. Wang started his position as an assistant professor in ME Department at UW-Madison.
  • 2023/10      We are seeking 2-3 PhD students in Control and Autonomy of Marine Robots, Bioinspired Robotics, Collective Robotics, etc., for the upcoming admissions cycle (Fall 2024); Deadline: 12/15/2023. Please visit our Opportunities page for more information.