Thies L Alff

Hamburg University of Technology, Ocean Institute, Universität Hamburg

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Thies L Alff is a robotics researcher specializing in the development and control of micro underwater robotic systems for operation in confined, cluttered, and hazardous aquatic environments. His work addresses critical challenges in underwater inspection, particularly for safety-critical missions such as monitoring legacy nuclear storage ponds. Alff’s major contributions include pioneering a reconfigurable micro underwater robot platform that achieves full actuation, enabling precise hovering and object inspection—a capability previously difficult to attain at small scales. He has also advanced localization techniques for agile underwater vehicles, providing the first in-depth evaluation of underwater AprilTag marker detection accuracy, and developed a novel image-based visual servoing framework for switchable leader-follower control of heterogeneous multi-agent underwater robot teams. His most cited paper (6 citations) on this multi-robot control system tackles the dual challenges of localization and communication in confined aquatic spaces. Through these innovations, Alff is pushing the boundaries of what small-scale underwater robots can accomplish, making autonomous inspection safer and more reliable in environments where human access is impossible or dangerous.