WANDA

Navy Research Lab Photos

WANDA (Wrasse-inspired Agile Near-shore Deformable-fin Automaton) is an autonomous underwater vehicle developed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. The fish-inspired UUV uses four actively controlled curvature robotic fins to "perform low-speed maneuvers to include forward and vertical translation and turn-in-place rotation," said Jason Geder,aerospace engineer, Laboratories for Computational Physics and Fluid Dynamics at NRL. The vehicle can move at two knots and researchers are currently evaluating its station keeping in the presence of waves to simulate a near-shore environment.