Robot Fish Detect Pollution
British scientists developed a robot fish that are to be released into the sea off north Spain to detect pollution. The robots were designed, and are being built, by professor Huosheng Hu and his team at the University of Essex, U.K.
If next year’s trial of the first five robotic fish in the northern Spanish port of Gijon is successful, the team hopes they will be used in rivers, lakes and seas across the world. “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,” said Rory Doyle, senior research scientist at engineering company BMT Group, which developed the robot fish with researchers at Essex University and funding from the European Commission. “This efficiency is something we need to ensure that our pollution detection sensors can navigate in the underwater environment for hours on end.” He also said that there were good reasons for making a fish-shaped robot, rather than a conventional mini-submarine. He and his colleagues chose a fish design because hundreds of millions of years of evolution have yielded an energy-efficient creature, he said. “Nature has done it very, very well.”
The robot fish will be roughly the size of a seal, meaning 1.5 meters (nearly 5 feet) long. The robot fish, modeled after a carp, costing 20,000 pounds ($29,000) apiece, mimic the movement of real fish and are equipped with tiny chemical sensors to sniff out potentially hazardous pollutants, such as leaks from vessels or underwater pipelines.
“It’s a little lab onboard the fish,” said Rory Doyle. They will collect data on pollution in the port of Gijón and wirelessly transmit the information back to the port’s control center and, unlike earlier robotic fish, which needed remote controls, they will be able to navigate independently without any human interaction. Moreover, they can’t get caught in nets easily, for instance, and their internal tracking systems can help the robot fish avoid collisions with boats and other obstacles.
Besides, the prototype robot fish have been swimming around the London Aquarium as they await their release off northern Spain in 2011. In the mean time, scientists are working to ensure that the sounds of the robots and other factors don’t disrupt the natural environment, Doyle added. “The hope is that this will prevent potentially hazardous discharges at sea as the leak would undoubtedly get worse over time if not located,” said Professor Huosheng Hu of Essex University, whose team is building the fish.
source: news.nationalgeographic.com; sciam.com.