Boston Dynamics' Spot robot is becoming a critical testbed for autonomous navigation research at the University of Texas, where it's helping develop the trust and validation frameworks the Navy needs before deploying autonomous systems in real-world operations. The quadruped robot serves as a platform for testing long-term autonomy capabilities, including navigating around people, adapting to different terrain, and traveling through unfamiliar environments without a map.

Why Is the Navy Investing in Academic Robotics Research?

Two University of Texas researchers were recently selected for the inaugural Chief of Naval Research Fellows program, a new initiative connecting top academic researchers with the Navy and Marine Corps' most pressing science and technology challenges. UT is the only institution with two fellows among the 12 selected nationwide from more than 180 nominations across approximately 70 academic institutions. The fellowship supports a continual flow of cutting-edge knowledge while building a network of researchers who can transform defense challenges into impactful science and technology research.

Joydeep Biswas, an associate professor of computer science at UT, directs the Autonomous Mobile Robotics Laboratory and uses Spot as a test platform. His research focuses on long-term autonomy, enabling robots to perceive, plan, navigate, and recover from failure in unpredictable real-world conditions. As a Chief of Naval Research fellow, Biswas will focus on how artificial intelligence and autonomous systems are adopted and deployed across different levels of naval operations, and on how those technologies are evaluated before adoption.

"This was an extremely rigorous, competitive selection process, and we are pleased to partner with some of the best and brightest minds our nation has to offer," said Chief of Naval Research Rachel Riley. "We look forward to collaborating with these innovative thought leaders to strengthen the warfighting capabilities of the Navy and Marine Corps."

Rachel Riley, Chief of Naval Research

What Makes Trust and Validation So Critical for Naval Robotics?

Biswas brings deep experience as a full-stack roboticist, having worked on end-to-end development of autonomous systems, from building hardware and writing systems software to developing new algorithms and fielding fully integrated robots. His work also involves collaborating with multiple stakeholders to ensure that technology solutions respect and satisfy domain-specific user needs. This expertise is particularly valuable for the Navy, which must evaluate autonomous systems before adoption, including the operational constraints, evidence, and validation that different stakeholders require to trust a system.

Biswas directs the recently established Center for Human and Robot Co-Adaptation, a multi-institutional effort backed by a five-year, $30 million National Science Foundation award focused on human-robot co-adaptation. His close collaboration with the Army Research Laboratory has also enabled firsthand insight into the operational needs of ground autonomy. Beyond robotics, Biswas has served on the Executive Council of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a leading international scientific society for AI, and led an AI-assisted peer-review pilot for AAAI's 2026 conference.

How Are Researchers Using Spot to Advance Naval Autonomy?

• Terrain Adaptation: Spot is being used to develop autonomous navigation capabilities that allow robots to adapt to different terrain types and environmental conditions without pre-programmed maps or human intervention.
• Human Interaction: The robot serves as a testbed for navigation systems that can safely navigate around people in shared spaces, a critical capability for naval environments where humans and autonomous systems must coexist.
• Unfamiliar Environment Navigation: Researchers are training Spot to travel through unfamiliar environments without relying on pre-existing maps, enabling autonomous systems to operate in novel operational areas.

Biswas previously led research on long-range planning for autonomous off-road navigation systems as principal investigator of UT's team for the Army Research Laboratory's SARA program. That work developed novel solutions to global visual localization by registration to satellite imagery and operator-defined long-range mission planning constraints. He has also carried lessons from industry work on the Amazon Astro robotics team into his academic research.

What Other Naval Technology Challenges Are UT Researchers Addressing?

The second UT fellow selected for the program is Zhenghui Sha, an associate professor of mechanical engineering who builds decision-centric foundations for complex systems engineering and design. Sha's research spans AI-assisted design, swarm manufacturing, and complex sociotechnical systems that underpin transportation networks, power grids, and other large-scale infrastructure. As a Chief of Naval Research fellow, Sha will work to bring state-of-the-art advances in AI-assisted design, multi-robot hybrid manufacturing, and complex systems engineering to bear on the design, manufacturing, and sustainment of next-generation naval platforms.

One challenge Sha plans to address is enabling factories that can produce many different products on demand without costly retooling, an approach that could bring rapid, flexible, and reconfigurable manufacturing directly to on-site part building and ship repair. Sha's lab developed one of the world's first operational cooperative 3D printing systems, which combines dexterous robotics with additive manufacturing to enable rapid, on-site fabrication and repairs that traditional manufacturing cannot accommodate. His work on AI-assisted design, including frameworks that accelerate the engineering design cycle from concept to validation, aligns closely with the Navy's interest in using AI to compress complex search problems and speed the path from ideation to deployment.

A formal welcoming ceremony for all 12 winners will take place in October at the Office of Naval Research headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. The fellowship represents a significant investment in connecting academic innovation with military operational needs, positioning researchers like Biswas and Sha at the intersection of robotics, autonomy, and national defense technology development.