Baked with potatoes? Better not, it’s a robot, not a fish!!
Mechanical fish? Yes, we’ve been there and we’ve seen that, along with a wide range of other robot animals created by scientists who probably did not have enough time to take care of them at home, so they were making up their own robotic pets. The RoboFish, created by a team of scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at least, is imitating the natural movements of fish, speeding through the water by flexing its mechanical “muscles”.
Its body, approximately 20 centimeters long, is made up of a single shell in polymeric material, which moves in a natural way just like real fish, through vibrations coming from the inside, generated by the engine which powers it. The fishes’ natural movement, in fact, comes from contraction of their muscles, which allows them to travel underwater at a speed around 10 times the length of their body per second.
The RoboFish has currently a very low speed in comparison, speeding at just one length per second, but this speed is achieved naturally, as the engine inside can increase or decrease the stiffness of different sections on the shell, thus obtaining a motion that flows much smoother when compared to older versions of mechanical fish; this motion is mostly concentrated in the tail section.
Thanks to the single-piece body, and to the durability of the material with which they are built, robotic fishes are certainly more solid now, and scientists are planning to power them with batteries rechargeable through motion, thus being able to use them, for example, for underwater inspection of ships, to examine tubes and pipes in search of any leaks or imperfections, or for underwater patrolling and surveillance of ports and rivers in areas infested by smugglers or pirates.
