Such underwater human-robot teaming is the focus of an MIT Lincoln Laboratory project funded through an internally administered R&D portfolio on autonomous systems and carried out by the  Advanced Undersea Systems and Technology Group . The project seeks to leverage the respective strengths of humans and robots to optimize maritime missions for the US military, including critical infrastructure inspection and repair, search and rescue, harbor entry, and countermine operations. “Divers and AUVs generally don’t team at all underwater,” said principal investigator Madeline Miller. “Underwater missions requiring humans typically do so because they involve some sort of manipulation a robot can’t do, like repairing infrastructure or deactivating a mine. Even ROVs are challenging to work with underwater in very skilled manipulation tasks because the manipulators themselves aren’t agile enough.” AI-powered underwater robot and diver search and recovery team.…