To watch the specimen gracefully cavort in its element brings to mind Thoreau’s phrase for the emerald-colored pickerel of Walden Pond: animalized water.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., say they have invented a robotic fish with qualities like no other aquatic automaton to date. Two students and an adviser constructed an underwater creature that can shake its booty on computer command and escape from an anxious angler’s grip nearly as fast as the real thing. It measures 13.5 inches and weighs just over two pounds, its torso and tail made of a light-green silicone rubber.
“It is a soft robot capable of rapid body motion,” says co-creator and doctoral candidate Andrew Marchese. Therein lies the key to why the device is more than a fanciful plaything. Soft robots that can maneuver more like living things solve a real problem in the real world: The better they get around, the less likely it is that they will bump into humans, their pets, or expensive vases and such, causing real damage.
“We’re very excited about the idea of soft machines because they are intrinsically safer than hard machines,” says Daniela Rus, Marchese’s adviser and director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Read also:
This soft robot fish swims like the real deal (GigaOM)
Robot fish and the dawn of "soft robots" (Boing Boing)
RoboBass: New Soft Robot Can Execute Escape Maneuvers Like a Real Fish … (Nature World News)
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