Throughout a summer time 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 possibility to deal with new issues and cutting-edge algorithm growth, Mahncke started an internship with Lincoln Laboratory’s Superior Undersea Programs and Expertise Group in 2025. 

Mahncke spent the summer time growing and troubleshooting an algorithm that might assist a human diver and robotic car collaboratively navigate underwater. The shortage of conventional localization aids — such because the World Positioning System, or GPS — in an underwater atmosphere posed challenges for navigation that Mahncke and her mentors sought to beat. Her work within the laboratory culminated in area checks of the algorithm on an operational underwater car. Accompanying group workers to area 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 mission had cut up off to go do different work. And he or she stated, ‘Here is my laptop computer. Listed below are the issues that you’ll want to do. I belief you to go do them.’ And so I acquired to be out on the water as not simply an additional pair of palms, however as one of many lead area testers,” Mahncke says. “I actually felt that my supervisors noticed me as the long run technology 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 collection of area checks on the finish of an formidable program. We figuratively threw her proper within the water, and she or he not solely floated, however performed an integral half in our program’s potential to hit a number of attain targets.”

Lincoln Laboratory’s summer time 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