Mar
27Freaky Fish Friday: Robofiche, who else?
Filed Under (Freaky Fish Friday) by Alexa & Cindy on 27-03-2009
Tagged Under : Freaky Fish Friday
We originally saw this week’s FFF star on Blogfish (thanks, Mark) and it’s been one of the most e-mailed videos of the week according to Yahoo! But for those of you not paying attention to fishy matters or if you just didn’t have time for eerily lifelike swimming of a synthetic silver and blue carpish fish, here is what we’ve been calling RoboFEESH all week, again, with some facts:
1) This fish was developed by British scientists at Essex University, and are being tested at the London Aquarium in the video below.
2) Researchers plan to test the first 5 robot fish in the port of Gijon off the northern coast of Spain next year, to see if they can detect dangerous pollution in the water from things such as leaks in underground piplelines.
3) If the Robofish pass their test, they could be used in lakes and rivers all over the world in an effort to tame and reduce pollution in bodies of water.
4) These fish swim on their own with no remote control, and use chemical sensors to find pollution. When they find it, they transmit data back to researchers’ computers via a Wifi connection.
5) Each fish costs about $29,000 US, so NO, Alexa won’t be getting one as a pet no matter how badly she wants one.
First, check out the fish, then keep reading.
Cool, you must admit!
So now, O4E has some questions for our scientist/conservationist friends, and anyone:
-What do you think about this robot fish “living” in the natural habitat of real fish?
-Do you think it is going to be a helpful invention or a harmful intrusion to the ecosystems it works in? For example, we wonder if a predator will ingest one. What then?
Let’s discuss.
Have a great weekend!
I don’t know.
Sounds like the quickest way to generate robot fishermen.
I think chemical and pollution contaminant detection is a great use of an AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle). I like the aesthetics of their design and believe it is a good publicity item with potential for some outreach built into the fact that they look so much like the cast of the “rainbow Fish” series of books. Still though, I recall some advanced swimming robots a few years ago, so I am skeptical that these are a major advance as a robotics, or mechanical design.
From a purely technological point of view I fail to see how these very decorative devices have any advantage, aside from aesthetics and possibly outreach, over the “more traditional” AUV’s such as the torpedo shaped ones used by Rutger’s Project Cool. If anything I would think the design would have a higher failure rate, and the ocean is a very harsh environment to operate equipment like this for long periods.
Still, extremely cool, and I would love to have one to test in both Long Island Sound and Belize for reaction of other marine organisms.
This is cool, but if it costs 29k per fish than it isn’t going to be very practical in real bodies of water. Like you said, something could eat it, or people could go find them to keep/sell for themselves. Maybe this can be an expensive prototype that will make way for cheaper copies in the future.
I think they would have to change the design and make it less shiny in order to use it in the real world. I know certain predatory fish are drawn to shiny objects that look like fish scales, so they should in order to cut down on accidental ingestion.
[...] tip to Oceans 4Ever for their post on Robo-fiche, the beginning of my robotic sea-critter [...]