"Subhuman Project" Human Powered Submarine

overThruster writes "Inventor Ted Ciamillo and marine biologist Frank Fish (yes, that's his real name) are at work on a human-powered sub designed to cross the Atlantic. What's interesting is the highly efficient propulsion system which uses a 'tail' modeled after CAT scans of a dolphin's. From the article: 'Ciamillo and Fish say they knew they were onto something when the first prototype Lunocet, a piece of sculpted foam sandwiched between two pieces of carbon fiber, essentially swam by itself. When they released it at the bottom of a test pool, its buoyancy combined with its cambered shape generated a forward thrust that made it scoot across the tank.'"

Comments

Not Entirely Human

[camperdave]

He plans to pedal 2 metres below the surface all day, coming up only at night when he will sleep in a tent erected on the top of the sub. If the wind is blowing in the right direction he'll fly a kite to gain a few extra miles while he sleeps.

So, it looks like they'll be supplementing human power with wind power. That's kind of disappointing.

'Ciamillo and Fish say they knew they were onto something when the first prototype Lunocet, a piece of sculpted foam sandwiched between two pieces of carbon fiber, essentially swam by itself.

Yes, that's called gliding. It happens whenever a thin flat surface moves freely through a fluid. Aeroplanes and gliders use this all the time. The keel on a sailboat and the rudder on a ship use the same principle. Many autonomous underwater vehicles use buoyancy gliding as a method of propulsion. Increase the density of the robot by compressing an air bladder, and the robot sinks. Fins convert the vertical drop into a forward glide. Expand the air bladder, the robot gets less dense and rises. Again the fins convert the vertical motion into forward motion.