Entry Date:
April 27, 2006

Laboratory for Autonomous Marine Sensing Systems (LAMSS)


The MIT Laboratory for Autonomous Marine Sensing in the Department of Mechanical Engineering is specializing in the development of new distributed ocean sensing concepts for oceanographic science, national defense and coastal management and protection. The laboratory was established in 2005 following the merger of the Mechanical and Ocean Engineering departments. It continues two decades of multi-disciplinary research and development into such systems by Department of Ocean Engineering, and the MIT Sea Grant AUV Laboratory.

In addition to the Laboratory Director, Prof. Henrik Schmidt, Prof. John Leonard, and Prof. Pierre Lermusiaux are associated with the research team. The staff includes four Research Engineers, Dr. Arjuna Balasuriya, Mr. Joseph Curcio, Mr. Ian Katz, and Dr. Michael Benjamin. In addition the research team includes a Vising Scientist, Dr. Donald Eickstedt. The faculty and staff, together with a significant number of students, provides a strongly multidisciplinary team with expertise in oceanographic sensing and modeling, sonar system technology, computational underwater acoustics, and marine robotics and communication networking.

With Professor Lermusiaux joining MIT in 2007, and becoming the most recent faculty member to be associated with LAMSS, the Laboratory will add the Multidisciplinary Simulation, Estimation, and Assimilation Systems (MSEAS) (formerly known as the Harvard Ocean Prediction System (HOPS)) to its in-house capabilities.