As strange as that may sound, the Navy has indeed trained dolphins and sea lions to search for bombs in and around vessels. While they have been fairly successful, they are difficult to train and involve a great deal of expense.

The dolphins have also had some trouble with smaller sized bombs, which may not sink the ship but will still cause considerable damage if left undetected. So does that mean a human diver needs to go under each ship that sails to ensure its not being sabotaged by bombs? Now robotic researchers may have come up with a better solution.

In their science research project Franz Hover, the Finmeccanica Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and graduate student Brendan Englot have designed algorithms that vastly improve such robots’ navigation and feature-detecting capabilities.

This new group of algorithms makes it a better bet to have robots designed for bomb scouting rather than making use of the dolphins. They have been working with resilient robots that have been constructed in the last decade for underwater reconnaissance missions.It is the progress on these different and unrelated science projects that have made the difference for teh bomb detection missions.