# CUREE: A Curious Underwater Robot for Ecosystem Exploration

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.03943 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03943/

## Key facts

- Cited by 13 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Mar 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Fast Online Object Tracking and Segmentation: A Unifying Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05050/) (2018)
- [Semi-Supervised Visual Tracking of Marine Animals using Autonomous Underwater Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.07344/) (2023)
- [SiamMask: A Framework for Fast Online Object Tracking and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.02088/) (2022)
- [Vision-Based Goal-Conditioned Policies for Underwater Navigation in the Presence of Obstacles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.16235/) (2020)
- [Streaming Scene Maps for Co-Robotic Exploration in Bandwidth Limited Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.03214/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [SeaSplat: Representing Underwater Scenes with 3D Gaussian Splatting and a Physically Grounded Image Formation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.17345/) (2024)
- [The Coralscapes Dataset: Semantic Scene Understanding in Coral Reefs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20000/) (2025)
- [Learning to Swim: Reinforcement Learning for 6-DOF Control of Thruster-driven Autonomous Underwater Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.00120/) (2024)
- [OceanSplat: Object-aware Gaussian Splatting with Trinocular View Consistency for Underwater Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.04984/) (2026)
- [Robot Goes Fishing: Rapid, High-Resolution Biological Hotspot Mapping in Coral Reefs with Vision-Guided Autonomous Underwater Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.02330/) (2023)
- [Streaming Gaussian Dirichlet Random Fields for Spatial Predictions of High Dimensional Categorical Observations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.15359/) (2024)
- [Benchmarking Online Object Trackers for Underwater Robot Position Locking Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.16569/) (2025)
- [Learning to Dock: A Simulation-based Study on Closing the Sim2Real Gap in Autonomous Underwater Docking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.17823/) (2025)
- [ReefMapGS: Enabling Large-Scale Underwater Reconstruction by Closing the Loop Between Multimodal SLAM and Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.11992/) (2026)
- [Semantically-Aware Diver Activity Recognition Framework for Effective Underwater Multi-Human-Robot Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.12374/) (2026)
- [Average-Power-Budgeted Underwater Vehicle Control via Constrained Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.25680/) (2026)
- [CORL-AUV: CFD Oriented Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.09557/) (2026)
- [CoralscapesV2: Panoptic and Fine-Grained Visual Scene Understanding in Coral Reefs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.12826/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The current approach to exploring and monitoring complex underwater ecosystems, such as coral reefs, is to conduct surveys using diver-held or static cameras, or deploying sensor buoys. These approaches often fail to capture the full variation and complexity of interactions between different reef organisms and their habitat. The CUREE platform presented in this paper provides a unique set of capabilities in the form of robot behaviors and perception algorithms to enable scientists to explore different aspects of an ecosystem. Examples of these capabilities include low-altitude visual surveys, soundscape surveys, habitat characterization, and animal following. We demonstrate these capabilities by describing two field deployments on coral reefs in the US Virgin Islands. In the first deployment, we show that CUREE can identify the preferred habitat type of snapping shrimp in a reef through a combination of a visual survey, habitat characterization, and a soundscape survey. In the second deployment, we demonstrate CUREE's ability to follow arbitrary animals by separately following a barracuda and stingray for several minutes each in midwater and benthic environments, respectively.