The Autonomous Family
- Website
A phylogenetic tree is a hypothesis, not a definitive fact. The evolution of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) spans more than six decades, resulting in numerous types of underwater robots collecting data in the ocean. How many of them are out there? What exactly are they doing, and who created them? Aside from their employment going unnoticed by large parts of society, it is hard to grasp the dimensions and genesis of the global fleet of AUVs as an outsider, even with some research.
Constituting an alternative design concept for and continuation of Autonomous Pioneers, The Autonomous Family presents a selection of 225 AUVs in the form of a phylogenetic tree. Employing the cladogram format as an attempt to trace the relation between (biological) species while leaving space for the unknown, the project chronicles a speculative evolution of the selected robots considering the purposes of their creation.
Based on fake ‘DNA’ sequences I created for the AUVs from the database available on auvac.org (Autonomous Undersea Vehicle Applications Center, status June 2022), I generated and edited the phylogenetic tree with the software MEGA. The website serves as an encyclopaedic walkthrough as the tree unfolds and grows in front of the viewer.
Main principle used to translate the selected parameters from the dataset into fake ‘DNA’ sequences to generate the tree. Had I chosen to focus on different parameters such as the materiality or ‘bodily’ features of the robots, the tree would have looked differently, resulting in another representation of the database and exploration of the robots’ origins.
Images and data via Autonomous Undersea Vehicle Applications Center, auvac.org [retrieved 06/2022].