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Robotic Fish Track Targets, Communicate With One Another
Roland Piquepaille writes "Many of today's underwater robots need to periodically come up to the surface to communicate with their human supervisors. But researchers at the University of Washington (UW) have developed a new kind of underwater vehicle. The 'Robofish' can work cooperatively with each other. 'The Robofish, which are roughly the size of a 10-pound salmon, look a bit like fish because they use fins rather than propellers.' According to the researchers, such robots 'could cooperatively track moving targets underwater, such as groups of whales or spreading plumes of pollution, or explore caves, underneath ice-covered waters, or in dangerous environments where surfacing might not be possible.' Further information and more pictures are also available for these autonomous fin-actuated underwater vehicles."
Actually just wait a bit more. the Former USSR is now pissed at the USA once again. (Something about our asshole practices of pushing our laws on them) and poised to whip the populace back up in a Hate amarica furvor once again.
Oh and they still have the ability to kill every single man woman and child on this planet in less than 12 hours.
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I'm guessing you have never watched a fish tank for any period of time. Even gold fish who tend to try eating everything will have a taste and ignore it after. Now, if the robo-fish gets any algae on it, it could be problematic as that would make it taste like something to eat.
Other than that, all those old boats sitting on the bottom have not been eaten bit by bit, so you can relax and quit worrying about the fish being killed by poisonous parts from the robo-fish.
Grouper and sharks and larger predatory fish might damage them in the initial lets have a taste moment, but I don't think there is too much to worry about there.
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To compare the toxicity of an electronically guided fish to a sunken boat...is a little excessive IMHO not only that, you're approaching this from the perspective that sunken boats, depending on what their cargo was, and how recent the boat was manufactured, are themselves not a source of biological toxins.
I am not a tree hugger, but my point here is that this kind of development needs to be approached from a much more ecologically sound perspective, given that the level of education and technology is advanced enough to do so.
What I see is this idea taking off, and then thousands of these things being produced...without any kind of biologically retroactive plan as far as what happens when they become inactive and begin to degrade in the open ocean...at numbers in the thousands.
"I'm very interested in the answer your question, as I'm sure the materials used to manufacture this robo fish are incredibly poisonous."
Why are you "sure" of that?
Most of the materials are obvious (metal, plastic, printed circuit board, battery) so unless there is Something Very Bad cunningly hidden is it's robo-guts, it's no worse than chucking a PC over the side. One shipwreck would put more material on the sea bed than the entire likely robo-fish production.
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