A robot fish developed by a team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) is ready to be programmed for specific functions, such as exploring the nooks and corners of wreckage for underwater archeology.
The robot fish, which functions as an autonomous underwater vehicle, mimics the movement of carps, and most fish swim like them.
"Some fish can achieve almost 180-degree turning in a small turning radius through bending their body while traditional underwater vehicles have a much larger turning radius," says NUS researcher Ren Qinyuan. "Hence it is quite a feat for us to achieve this movement in our robot fish."
The researchers built two fish robots, including a smaller prototype that can only swim at the water's surface and was developed for investigating two-dimensional motion control and planning in a small place. They plan to equip the robot with more sensors, such as global positioning systems and video cameras, to improve autonomous three-dimensional movement. The team also wants to make the fish smaller and more realistic.
"We also intend to test out our fish with more challenging tasks such as object detection," says NUS researcher Fan Lupeng.
From National University of Singapore
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