RoboFish To Be Unleashed On Helpless Ocean
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Friday, 20 of March , 2009 at 2:18 am
We first saw these robotic carp back in September of 2007, when they were on display at the London Aquarium. They’re more than eye candy, though, and they’re finally getting a mission: detecting pollution off the coast of Spain. The fish will be equipped with chemical sensors, with which they’ll be able to home in on sources of pollution. After an eight hour shift, the fish will automatically swim back home to recharge and offload their data via WiFi.
Why fish? It’s the reason we have a biorobotics tag: if you have a specific application, chances are that evolution has already devised an optimum solution, and robot fish are no exception: “In using robotic fish we are building on a design created by hundreds of millions of years’ worth of evolution which is incredibly energy efficient. This efficiency is something we need to ensure that our pollution detection sensors can navigate in the underwater environment for hours on end.”
Each fish in the school of five is a meter and a half long and costs about $30k, which probably makes them impractical to replace my pet goldfish, Finny McFinnigan, whom I accidentally killed on Tuesday when I oversaturated his bowl with green dye and used beer.
Just kidding.
[ BMT Group ] VIA [ Loving The Machine ]
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Category: Biorobotics, Research
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