MIT Built A Remote-Controlled Robot Fish That's Helping Us Save Our Oceans And Its Marine Life
SoFi is low-energy, a good swimmer, and could help us save the oceans.
In a bid to study shy creatures in the deep sea, MIT researchers have decided to charm them using one of their own. They¡¯ve built a robotic fish that can swim through the ocean, and bring back valuable data without humans around scaring the fish.
The soft robotic fish SoFi is an adorable, pure white construct that¡¯s remote controlled, complete with an equipped camera and pretty good swimming capacity.
SoFi solves several problems common to robots built to go underwater. For one thing, underwater bots usually have to be physically wired to a boat to control because radio waves have poor transmission in water. Instead, SoFi uses acoustic signals to communicate.
¡°Radio frequency communication underwater just works for a few centimeters,¡± MIT CSAIL roboticist Robert Katzschmann, the lead author on the paper says. ¡°Acoustic signals in water can travel for much longer and with much less energy consumption.¡± This method lets divers pilot the robot from as far as 70 feet away.
The second problem SoFi had to overcome was movement. Actuators would be too clunk to be feasible here, and would make the robot move so jerkily that it would scare the ocean life around it. Instead, this bot uses the soft robotics method, moving with the help of cycling fluids. The tail has two hollow chambers that pump water in and out, causing it to wiggle just like a fish would, propelling the robot along. It¡¯s pretty cool that the resulting movement looks exactly like a fish swimming naturally.
The third problem is that swimming takes a lot of energy. To fix this issue, the scientists turned to fish once more, which have evolved to store air in a body part called a swim bladder. This lets them maintain their vertical height underwater, as well as keeps them from having to correct their vertical height while swimming. SoFi¡¯s bladder is a cylinder that compresses and releases fluids using a piston, to maintain its height.
¡°The compartments that usually would be air-tight, air-filled electronics compartments, we filled with oil¡± Katzschmann says. This helps give the soft robot a proper shape and lets it swim up to 60 feet below.
SoFi could have huge possibilities for researchers in the future. In fact, in tests they found fish swimming up to the bot, curious to see what it was. Right now, the bot is remotely piloted but in the future the MIT researchers believe it would be able to lock onto a fish and follow it wherever it goes.
