Samuel Lensgraf

Dartmouth College, Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition

Papers

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About

Samuel Lensgraf is a pioneering roboticist whose research lies at the intersection of autonomous systems, underwater construction, and marine perception. His work fundamentally reimagines how robots can operate in challenging aquatic environments, moving beyond surface-dependent infrastructure toward truly autonomous, free-floating systems. Lensgraf’s major contributions include developing the first low-cost autonomous robotic system for underwater assembly of mortarless structures (Droplet, 2021), and demonstrating the first free-floating construction robot capable of using active ballasting to transport cement blocks—a breakthrough that replaces ad-hoc surface relays with scalable, self-contained underwater robots (Buoyancy enabled autonomous underwater construction, 2023). His highly cited work “Sunflower” (2022, 9 citations) addresses the foundational challenge of underwater robot localization without surface infrastructure. Most recently, Lensgraf introduced SeePerSea (2025), the first publicly accessible multimodal perception dataset for autonomous surface vehicles, collected over four years to improve situational awareness of in-water obstacles. With over 25 citations across his core publications, Lensgraf is shaping the future of autonomous marine robotics, enabling applications from artificial reefs to retaining walls, and setting new standards for scalable, infrastructure-free underwater autonomy.