Mapping the Unknown: How a Northeastern Postdoc Alan Papalia Is Helping Advance Underwater Navigation

How do you navigate the deep ocean without GPS? Northeastern postdoctoral researcher Alan Papalia is helping answer that question. Working with Assistant Professor David Rosen, Papalia helped to develop an open-source algorithm that dramatically improves the reliability of low-cost acoustic sensors—tools often used to guide underwater robots through dangerous, unmapped parts of the ocean.

Their breakthrough could have significant cost savings for research, allowing scientists to use $10,000 navigation systems instead of $500,000 ones, making ocean exploration and climate change research more accessible than ever. From testing in the Charles River to future missions under Arctic ice, their work is a leap forward for robotic research—and for the scientists who depend on it to study melting glaciers, rising seas, and more.

To learn more, check out this article from Northeastern Global News.