Throughout a summer season internship at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Ivy Mahncke, an undergraduate scholar of robotics engineering at Olin School of Engineering, took a hands-on method 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 prospect to sort out new issues and cutting-edge algorithm improvement, Mahncke started an internship with Lincoln Laboratory’s Superior Undersea Programs and Know-how Group in 2025.
Mahncke spent the summer season growing and troubleshooting an algorithm that will assist a human diver and robotic automobile collaboratively navigate underwater. The shortage of conventional localization aids — such because the International Positioning System, or GPS — in an underwater surroundings posed challenges for navigation that Mahncke and her mentors sought to beat. Her work within the laboratory culminated in subject assessments of the algorithm on an operational underwater automobile. Accompanying group workers to subject check websites within the Atlantic Ocean, Charles River, and Lake Superior, Mahncke had the chance see her software program in motion in the actual world.
“One of many lead engineers on the venture had cut up off to go do different work. And he or she mentioned, ‘This is my laptop computer. Listed below are the issues that you want to do. I belief you to go do them.’ And so I received to be out on the water as not simply an additional pair of arms, however as one of many lead subject testers,” Mahncke says. “I actually felt that my supervisors noticed me as the long run era of engineers, both at Lincoln Lab or simply within the broader business.”
Says Madeline Miller, Mahncke’s internship supervisor: “Ivy’s internship coincided with a rigorous sequence of subject assessments on the finish of an bold program. We figuratively threw her proper within the water, and he or she not solely floated, however performed an integral half in our program’s skill to hit a number of attain objectives.”
Lincoln Laboratory’s summer season analysis program runs from mid-Might to August. Functions at the moment are open.
Video by Tim Briggs/MIT Lincoln Laboratory | 2 minutes, 59 seconds
