Dr. Erin M. Fischell

Assistant Scientist
Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering

Contact Information:
Work: 508-289-3062
efischell@whoi.edu
Building: Bigelow

Mailing Address:
266 Woods Hole Road, MS #11
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Woods Hole, MA 02543

Research Interests

My primary research goal is to use autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to investigate novel acoustic sensing and autonomy for defense and oceanography applications.

Current research topics include:

Using vehicle autonomy, signal processing, machine learning and target scattering acoustics to characterize seabed targets in real time on AUVs using data collected on simple nose arrays.
Acoustic navigation for very low-cost AUVs.
Vehicle autonomy using relative acoustic positioning for acoustic and oceanographic sensing applications.
Multi-AUV autonomy for acoustic sensing.
Oceanographic sensing using virtual arrays of AUVs
Passive acoustic tracking

Honors and Awards

Moore Inventor Fellowship, 2019.
Elected to Cornell University Engineering College Council, term 2018-2021.
IEEE JOE Outstanding Reviewers of 2017 (January 2018).
Earl Ewing Hays Award, MIT-WHOI Joint Program Alumni Award (2017).
Battelle Postdoctoral Associateship (2015-2017).
Acoustical Oceanography/Underwater Acoustics Best Student Paper Award, Acoustical Society of America Fall Meeting (2014).
Acoustical Oceanography Best Student Paper Award, Acoustical Society of America Fall Meeting (2013).
NSF Graduate Research Fellow (2010-2013).
Walter Werring Excellence Studies Prize, Mechanical Engineering, Cornell University (2010).
Team Leader, Cornell University Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (CUAUV) 2008-2010. Led CUAUV to place first overall, first in design at 2010 and 2009 AUVSI RoboSub competitions.

Current Projects

ONR SIDEx: seismo-acoustic ice crack localization
ARPA-E MARINER Category 4, "Integrated Monitoring of Macroalgae Farms using Acoustics and UUV sensing"
Multi-AUV sensing, command and control (i.e. underwater swarming)
Acoustic detection, classification, localization and tracking
Low-cost AUV navigation

Peer-reviewed Publications

D. Fourie, N. R. Rypkema, P. Vaz Teixeira, S. Claassens, E. Fischell and J. Leonard, “Towards Real-Time Non-Gaussian SLAM for Underdetermined Navigation.” IEEE IROS, Accepted Aug. 2020.

E. M. Fischell, A. R. Kroo and B. W. O’Neill, "Single-Hydrophone Low-Cost Underwater Vehicle Swarming," in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 354-361, Dec 2019.

E. M. Fischell, D. Gomez-Ibanez, A. Lavery, T. Stanton, A. Kukulya. “Autonomous underwater vehicle perception of infrastructure and growth for aquaculture.” IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation workshop on Underwater Robotic Perception, May 2019. [avail: http://icra-2019-uwroboticsperception.ge.issia.cnr.it/assets/ICRA19-WS-URPCameraReadySubmissions/ICRA19-WS-URP-Paper-11.pdf]

E. M. Fischell, N. R. Rypkema and H. Schmidt, "Relative Autonomy and Navigation for Command and Control of Low-Cost Autonomous Underwater Vehicles," in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 1800-1806, April 2019.

E. M. Fischell, O. A. Viquez, and H. Schmidt. “Passive acoustic tracking for behavior mode classification between surface and underwater vehicles”. 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). October 2018. 2383-2388. DOI: 10.1109/IROS.2018.8593981.

N. R. Rypkema, E. M. Fischell and H. Schmidt. “Closed-Loop Single-Beacon Passive Acoustic navigation for Low-Cost Autonomous Underwater Vehicles”. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2018. Winner of IROS ICROS Best Application Paper Award.

E. Fischell and H. Schmidt. “Multistatic acoustic characterization of seabed targets.” J. Acoust. Soc. Am., vol. 142 no. 3, pp 1587-1596 (2017). Doi: 10.1121/1.5002887.

N. R. Rypkema, E. M. Fischell, and H. Schmidt. “One-Way Travel-Time Inverted Ultra-Short Baseline Localization for Low-Cost Autonomous Underwater Vehicles.” 2017 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) (Accepted for publication).

E. M. Fischell and H. Schmidt. “Supervised machine learning for estimation of target aspect angle from bistatic acoustic scattering.” IEEE JOE (2017).

E. M. Fischell and H. Schmidt. “Environmental effects on seabed object bistatic scattering classification.” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 141, 28-37 (2017).

E. M. Fischell and H. Schmidt. "AUV behaviors for collection of bistatic and multistatic acoustic scattering data from seabed targets." 2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2016, pp 2645-2650.

E. M. Fischell and H. Schmidt, “Classification of underwater targets from autonomous underwater vehicle sampled bistatic acoustic scattered fields.” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 138, 3773-3784 (2015).

E. Fischell, T. Schneider and H. Schmidt, “Design, Implementation and Characterization of Precision Timing for Bistatic Acoustic Data Acquisition.” IEEE JOE, ISSN: 0364-9059 (2015).

Conference Publications and Presentations

V. Pallayil, Y. Lin, E. Fischell, A. L. Kukulya, D. P. Knobles and P. S. Wilson, "Integration and Testing of a Low-Profile Hydrophone Array with REMUS 100 AUV for Seabed Characterization and Marine Mammal Detection Application," 2019 IEEE Underwater Technology (UT), Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 2019, pp. 1-8.

S. A. T. Randeni P., N. R. Rypkema, E. M. Fischell, A. L. Forrest, M. R. Benjamin and H. Schmidt, "Implementation of a Hydrodynamic Model-Based Navigation System for a Low-Cost AUV Fleet," 2018 IEEE/OES Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Workshop (AUV), Porto, Portugal, 2018, pp. 1-6.

O. A. Viquez, E. M. Fischell , N. R. Rypkema and H. Schmidt, “Design of a general autonomy payload for low-cost AUV R D”, 2016 IEEE/OES Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV), pp 151-155, (November 2016).

Erin M. Fischell and H. Schmidt. “Seabed target discrimination using multistatic acoustic scattering data”, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Honolulu HI, Nov. 2016.

E. M. Fischell, N. Rypkema and H. Schmidt. “Relative Acoustic Navigation for Sensing with Low-Cost AUVs.” ICRA 2016 Workshop on Marine Robot Localization and Navigation, May 20, 2016. (avail. http://icra2016.csail.mit.edu/navigation-localization-workshop/abstracts/05_Fischell_ICRAworkshop_abstract.pdf).

E. M. Fischell, H. Schmidt. “Estimation of cylinder orientation using autonomous underwater vehicle mapping of bistatic scattered fields.” Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Jacksonville FL, November 2015.

E. M. Fischell, H. Schmidt. “Autonomous Assessment of Seabed Ripple Geometry from Bistatic Acoustic Scattering Data.” Seabed and Sediment Acoustics: Measurements and Modelling Conference, Bath, UK, Sept. 7-9 2015.

A. Anderson, E. Fischell, T. Howe, T. Miller, A. Parrales-Salinas, N. Rypkema, D. Barrett, M. Benjamin, A. Brennen, M. Defillipo, J. Leonard, L. Paull, H. Schmidt, N. Wang and A. Yaari. “An Overview of MIT-Olin's Approach in the AUVSI RobotX Competition.” Field and Service Robotics 2015.

E. M. Fischell, S. Petillo, T. Howe, H. Schmidt. “Mapping bistatic scattering from spherical and cylindrical targets using an autonomous underwater vehicle in BAYEX'14 experiment.” Presentation for the Acoustical Society of America, Indianapolis, Indiana, 27–31 October 2014.

E. M. Fischell and H. Schmidt. "Use of supervised machine learning for real-time classification of underwater targets using Autonomous Underwater Vehicle sampled bistatic acoustic scattered fields." Presentation for the Acoustical Society of America, Providence, RI, May 2014.

E. M. Fischell and H. Schmidt. "Supervised machine learning for estimation of rough bottom anisotropy direction using bistatic acoustic scattered fields." Presentation for the Acoustical Society of America, San Francisco CA, November 2013.

E. M. Fischell and H. Schmidt. "Supervised machine learning for classification of underwater target geometry from sampled scattered acoustic fields in the presence of rough bottom interference." Presentation for the Acoustical Society of America, Kansas City Missouri, 2012.

E. M. Fischell and H. Schmidt. "Supervised machine learning for real time classification of underwater targets from sampled scattered acoustic fields." Presentation for the Acoustical Society of America, San Diego CA, 2011.

Erin Fischell, Tracy Cheung, Brian Mittereder, James Brian Rajsky and Peter Sullivan. "Flexible Mission Infrastructure for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles." Conference Proceedings for AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems North America 2009, Washington DC, August 2009.

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Education

Ph.D.: Mechanical and Ocean Engineering, MIT/WHOI Joint Program (2015)

B.S.: Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University (2010)