New Underwater Robot Designed To Mimic The Sunfish [Video]

New Underwater Robot Designed To Mimic The Sunfish

We’ve seen more than our share of different attempts at creating viable ocean going robots that have used everything from manta rays to jellyfish as their design guides. Well we have a new one to add to the list from the engineers at AeroVironment who decided that the ocean sunfish, also known as the mola, would be their example to follow.

You see the ocean living sunfish has a rather peculiar habit in that it will come to the surface and roll onto its side so it can bask in the sun. While scientists aren’t sure why the mola does this the engineers at AeroVironment has designed their ocean going robot to do the same thing, but in this case it is to charge its integrated solar panels.

The power gathered by these panels would be used to power an onboard data logger and to provide power to allow the robot to cruise at about two knots. The robot is just a proof of concept at this point.

Here is what the Mola robot looks like in action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3Q0Uz_shDI&feature=player_embedded

via GizMag

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Tags: Ocean, proof of concept, robots

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Steven Hodson Steven has been around the tech world long enough to see most of the stuff we think of cool happen before which leads to a certain bit of cynicism that has contributed to him being known as the cranky old fart of the Internet. Besides sharing some of the goodness that he finds with you here at 42x you can also find him curating some digital goodness at Winextra (tech type stuff) and Rotten Gumdrops (for your daily dose of WTF).