Robotic Jellyfish On The Move

Engineers design a group of autonomous jellies that swim like the real thing

By Gregory Mone Posted 04.30.2008 at 7:38 am 4 Comments

Aquajelly Festo

At a conference in Germany, engineers unveiled a robotic jellyfish designed to swim—but not sting—like the real thing.

The AquaJelly runs on rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, has a roughly spherical body and uses eight tentacles to get around in the water. The tentacles undulate like the tail of a real fish, and small fins at the ends give the machine a little extra push on the water. To steer, the robot shifts its weight, and it drives around its tank autonomously. Pressure sensors tell the AquaJelly how deep it is in the water within a few millimeters, and light sensors give it an idea of the location of potential obstacles, including other robo-jellies.

Now if we could just outfit them with lasers and get them to fry the jellies that plague so many beaches in the summer, that would be something.

Via Robots.net

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4 Comments

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redwarrior

04/30/08 at 6:21 pm

so what would be the application of these jellys (or the technology developed to make them)?

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guitarwiz20

04/30/08 at 6:42 pm

You say that "if we could just outfit them with lasers and get them to fry the jellies that plague so many beaches in the summer, that would be something. " Do jellyfish kill people? No. Whats the point of killing a creature in the sea that doesn't kill? WHy not target sharks instead?Wouldn't that be of use?

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podboq

05/01/08 at 5:35 am

spying on submarines....

ending up in the bellies of other sea-life.. leaching Lith/ion fluids all over... great idea.

So caught up in if you could, you never stop to think if you should.

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guruuswa

05/19/08 at 5:32 am

they simply look cool. we can kill all the real animals in the wild and replace them with these robots that do the same thing...this means that we wont have any more extinction and stuph