What Engineers Intend To Do With A Newly Developed Fish Robot “Sofi”
The scientists at MIT had earlier this month released a short video of their newly developed robotic fish. The information was quickly spread across the internet but little was said about it afterward.
The Sofi robot fish is another progress made in the development of Animal robots. The robot fish was made to have a similar appearance with real fishes, swimming at variable speeds with its well-fitted fin at the two sides and the tail.
Though the robot fish was not made to appear like a giant creature among the real fishes in the water for the purpose of not scaring away other small real fishes, the size may not actually exceed 3 feet in length and 50cm in diameter, as was observable from the video when one of the engineers held the fish with two hands to disassemble it in a way of showing the various parts of the robot fish.
Inside the disassembled robot fish, there are many parts that make up the entire body of the fish which can be said to be in three units; the tail section which is very flexible and may probably be been made from a rubber or plastic or the combination of the both.
The next unit is the center which is strong and may have been made with a plastic material having the two fin attached at both sides being linked to the electric motor at the head section of the robot.
The third section is the head unit which can be said to be the last section, it has the camera eyes attached to its two sides to record and transfer the video to the monitoring centers through a small antenna fixed at the top of the head, the antenna is believed to aid the robot fish also in making wireless connections to the controlling center.
Besides the above design, the swimming test of the fish inside the water revealed no difference to that of the real fishes inside the same water.
The engineers said the motive behind the invention of such robot fish, is to enable the biologists to have robots inside water that would enable them to have proper research on aquatic lives, discover hidden animals in the water, and enable them to study the behavior of fishes in their response to a change of environment.
However, a robot such as Sofi can assist fishing industries to locate actual places some specific species of fishes can be found and help them to launch their attack in a précised manner.
Sofi was said to swim up to the depth of 50 feet, such depth is enough to use the robot for searching purposes in the event of capsized boat, plane crash, or lost items, etc., that fall into any water whose depth is not more than 50 feet.
Such that it could be of a greater help in assisting underwater Divers to detect the objects inside the water first and then make faster retrieval of such objects from the water.
The video of the robot fish “Sofi has been attached to this post for proper understanding, do not hesitate to drop your comment on what you think in regard to the fish.
It’s a fish, it’s a robot, it’s freaking awesome pic.twitter.com/vSD6G7SmTJ
— CNET (@CNET) March 30, 2018
