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About

Mari Ohashi is a robotics researcher whose work sits at the fascinating intersection of biomimicry, underwater robotics, and chemical sensing. Her research has focused primarily on developing autonomous underwater robots capable of locating chemical sources in challenging stagnant water conditions — a problem of significant practical importance for applications ranging from locating unexploded ordnance to identifying undersea wreckage. Ohashi's most notable contribution is her pioneering development of crayfish-inspired robots that actively generate water currents to enhance chemical detection. Drawing from the natural behavior of crayfish, which wave their maxillipeds to draw food odors toward their chemoreceptors, her robots replicate this elegant biological strategy to overcome the fundamental limitation that chemicals remain trapped near their source in still water. This body of work, developed across multiple publications from 2008 to 2012, has accumulated citations that reflect growing interest in biologically-inspired underwater olfaction. More recently, Ohashi expanded her research into compact surface plasmon resonance sensors, advancing the miniaturization of chemical sensing technology for mobile underwater platforms. Her career demonstrates a consistent commitment to solving real-world underwater sensing challenges through creative biological inspiration, making her work valuable reading for researchers in robotics, chemical sensing, and biomimetic systems.