Tyler Paine

MIT MechE Research Scientist, Marine Roboticist

I am a Research Scientist at MIT in the Marine Autonomy Lab, led by Dr. Mike Benjamin.
We develop mathematical models of environments and autonomous systems, analyze their properties, and design robot systems that leverage these insights to maximize performance. My work draws on a wide range of theoretical concepts in control, estimation, and autonomy to address challenges in marine robotics, including multi-vehicle adaptive sampling, multi-agent competitions and games, and control of highly modified vehicles.
Multi-agent autonomy experiments at MIT using a fleet of Clearpath Heron unmanned surface vehicles. The goals of this experiment were to evaluate a learned behavior for cooperative search, as well as to validate a distributed safety control filter to prevent collisions. Some of these behaviors and algorithms for collective intelligence are part of the moos-ivp-multi project. This particular experiment was conducted in collaboration with Ever Gonzalez and was filmed by Ethan Phan.
My PhD research focused on maximizing the performance of robot teams in the field by developing new mathematical models, rigorously analyzing their properties, and building marine robots to experimentally validate them. 1) A scalable collective decision-making model with distributed inputs that enables 2) teams to make rapid and optimal decisions. Heterogeneous teams of uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) have used these methods to: 3) win a multi-robot capture-the-flag competition and 4) successfully complete a dynamic high-value unit protection scenario. 5) A distributed control filter maintains safe operation during a collaborative search.
More broadly, my research interests include multi-robot systems, control, estimation, and deploying reliable systems in marine environments. Prior to MIT, I was a machine design engineer at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Keyport (NUWC Keyport). For more details, see the Research page.

Background

I have a PhD in Mechanical Engineering and Oceanographic Engineering from the MIT-WHOI Joint Program (2025), a MS in Mechanical Engineering from Johns Hopkins (2018), and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Montana State (2011). I was a SMART Scholar and an MIT Presidential Fellow. I am also a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) with approximately seven years of industry experience as a machine design engineer.

Open-source software

Maintainer of software for the Clearpath Heron USV fleet at MIT:
  • Forked ROS repositories for the Heron fleet.
  • MIT MOOS-IvP repositories for the Heron fleet.
Contributor:

Other software: Ongoing research areas and licensable code

  • moos-ivp-multi, a collection of baseline algorithms for distributed and decentralized autonomy. These capabilities can be composed into versatile, sophisticated multi-agent systems. They are built on the open-source MOOS-IvP codebase and are licensable through MIT TLO.
  • Development of high-performance controllers for marine vehicles, including contributions to the DARPA LINC program. This includes control of a SAFE 29 Defender-class vessel at speeds exceeding 30 knots.
  • Adaptive sampling methods for marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) validation. As of Spring 2026, this is an active area of research, with open-source releases planned.

Want to connect?

Please do not hesitate to reach out if you would like to chat. Also, most of my papers are freely available on arXiv.