MIT Researchers Develop Robot Fish that Moves like the Real Thing

Thanks to MIT researchers, their collaborative efforts have made a new aquatic robot that completely replicates the realistic movements of a fish by producing the illusion of the real animal.

Researchers created the design of the robot based on a new generation of machines called soft robots-composed of fluid flowing through flexible channels that ultimately helps drive the device.

Previous versions of the product have involved mechanized devices with hinged bodies that somewhat restrained the flexibility and agility of various designs. However, researchers note that the bodies of these soft robots can bend anywhere along their length making the ultimate choice for various projects.

This is the first autonomous soft robot that is able to execute rapid body movements, including escaping from traps or nets in the same way that a real fish would swim to safety.

"As robots penetrate the physical world and start interacting with people more and more, it's much easier to make robots safe if their bodies are so wonderfully soft that there's no danger if they whack you," said Daniela Rus, who assisted the project, via a press release.

"To be honest, that's not something I designed for. I designed for it to look like a fish, but we got the same inherent parameter decoupling that real fish have," added Andrew Marchese, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who helped build the robot. 

What do you think?

More information regarding the study can be found via the journal Soft Robotics.