You don’t need to be up on the latest headlines to know that the oceans aren’t in the best state of affairs. A paddle out at your local, which, if it’s anything like most beaches it has at least some plastic or litter on the sand or in the water, will do. Macro-level scientific assessments, though, are bleak. Just last week we learned that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is larger than previously thought, then there’s coral bleaching and sea level rise. Yeesh.
Scientists are rapidly trying to gather data about the oceans in an effort to better understand their general health and how and why they’re changing. And researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory recently unveiled its newest technology to do just that: a biomimetic soft robotic fish (called SoFi) that allows for “close-up exploration of underwater life.”
“To our knowledge, this is the first robotic fish that can swim untethered in three dimensions for extended periods of time,” CSAIL Ph.D. candidate Robert Katzschmann told MIT News. Katzchmann is the lead author of the new journal article published in Science Robotics. “We are excited about the possibility of being able to use a system like this to get closer to marine life than humans can get on their own,” he said.
SoFi was tested at Rainbow Reef in Fiji and reportedly “swam at depths of more than 50 feet for up to 40 minutes at once, nimbly handling currents and taking high-resolution photos and videos.”
“We view SoFi as a first step toward developing almost an underwater observatory of sorts,” said CSAIL director Daniela Rus who coauthored the article with Katzschmann, Joseph DelPreto, and Robert MacCurdy. “It has the potential to be a new type of tool for ocean exploration and to open up new avenues for uncovering the mysteries of marine life.”
