During a summer internship at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Ivy Mahncke, an undergraduate student of robotics engineering at Olin College of Engineering, took a hands-on approach to testing algorithms for underwater navigation. She first discovered her love for working with underwater robotics as an intern on the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 2024. Drawn by the prospect to tackle recent problems and cutting-edge algorithm development, Mahncke began an internship with Lincoln Laboratory’s Advanced Undersea Systems and Technology Group in 2025.
Mahncke spent the summer developing and troubleshooting an algorithm that may help a human diver and robotic vehicle collaboratively navigate underwater. The dearth of traditional localization aids — akin to the Global Positioning System, or GPS — in an underwater environment posed challenges for navigation that Mahncke and her mentors sought to beat. Her work within the laboratory culminated in field tests of the algorithm on an operational underwater vehicle. Accompanying group staff to field test sites within the Atlantic Ocean, Charles River, and Lake Superior, Mahncke had the chance see her software in motion in the true world.
“One among the lead engineers on the project had split off to go do other work. And she or he said, ‘Here’s my laptop. Listed below are the things that you should do. I trust you to go do them.’ And so I got to be out on the water as not only an additional pair of hands, but as one in all the lead field testers,” Mahncke says. “I actually felt that my supervisors saw me as the longer term generation of engineers, either at Lincoln Lab or simply within the broader industry.”
Says Madeline Miller, Mahncke’s internship supervisor: “Ivy’s internship coincided with a rigorous series of field tests at the top of an ambitious program. We figuratively threw her right within the water, and he or she not only floated, but played an integral part in our program’s ability to hit several reach goals.”
Lincoln Laboratory’s summer research program runs from mid-May to August. Applications at the moment are open.
Video by Tim Briggs/MIT Lincoln Laboratory | 2 minutes, 59 seconds