Giant Robotic Jellyfish Unveiled by Researchers

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, an anonymous reader writes in with news about a giant robot jellyfish. As if there weren't enough real jellyfish around to trigger our thalassophobia, researchers at Virginia Tech have created Cryo -- an eight-armed autonomous robot that mimics jelly movement with the help of a flexible silicone hat. The man-sized jellybot altogether dwarfs previous efforts, hence the upgrade from small tank to swimming pool for mock field tests. And unlike the passively propelled bots we've seen recently, Cryo runs on batteries, with the researchers hoping to better replicate the energy-efficient nature of jelly movement to eventually increase Cryo's charge cycle to months instead of hours. That's also the reason these robotic jellyfish are getting bigger -- because the larger they are, the further they can go."

Comments

Re:obl.

[ackthpt]

I, for one, welcome our robotic, aquatic overlords.

Admit it, you want to have your brain transplanted into one of these, along with Wi-Fi, and you'll spend the rest of your days happily exploring and blogging about it.

Point?

[CanHasDIY]

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the continual advancement of science, but... why? What useful purpose could a giant, robot jellyfish possibly serve?

From TFA:

Potential uses include ocean monitoring

.. which we already have, and better methods at that.

perhaps clearing oil spills,

Again, not a novel concept, and the methods we have in place now (partially thanks to the Deepwater Horizon disaster) seem to work pretty well (since oil tends to sit on the surface of the water, what good would an underwater robot do, anyway?)

...the US Navy, which is funding the work, sees an opportunity to recruit jellies for underwater surveillance -- a job the researchers say is suited to their natural-looking disguise.

Riiiiiight... like a 10-foot diameter silicon disk with a flashy-flashy LED on the top is going to fool anybody...

Seriously, I think "Because we thought it would be cool, and wanted to prove that we could" would be a more reasonable excuse than the ones posited above.

Re:Point?

[ikaruga]

While I agree with you that a Jellyfish robot by itself doesn't seem all that useful, it's important to notice we're talking about an academic project. The system composing technologies, like developed actuators, control algorithms, communication systems, materials, waterproofing, underwater sensors, etc, are what really matters. The Jellyfish robot that is making the news is nothing but an academic testing and benchmark platform for all these "real", useful technologies.

Re:Point?

[David Gould]

If you RTFS, you might notice that it mentions "replicat[ing] the energy-efficient nature of jelly movement". Any task that's useful to perform in water can be done better by making the vehicle more energy-efficient. Other properties of the design will no doubt make it more suitable for some tasks than for others. That'll all shake out as the technology becomes available to designers of machines for all sorts of purposes. Adding another mode of locomotion to the toolkit available to such designers can only be useful.

Re:Point?

[HiThere]

I question that a robot inherently has a high density. (FWIW, I believe that even a ship is lighter than water.)

The important thing here is that it can adjust it's depth in the water in an energy efficient manner. This would seem tailor made to trace the flow of ocean currents at varying depths. But they need to get the efficiency up a bit. I don't think a few months is sufficient...not for the use-case I'm imagining. And it would need to rise to the surface occasionally to transmit to a receiver (possibly a satellite) what it's position was, and anything else it was monitoring.

That said, this is just the first idea off the top of my head. There are probably other uses. Many of them would probably require a longer explanation, i.e. be more specialized, and not obvious why they were important to those outside whatever field they applied to.

For that matter, do you remember how long everyone considered the laser a remarkable tool that had no uses? (I think it was over a decade.) This is not only less remarkable, it also has a couple of plausible uses...once it's a bit more developed.

eaten

[OlRickDawson]

From what I've read, it looks like they want it to look more and more like a Jellyfish. I wonder how they will keep it from getting eaten?