Large Robotic Jellyfish Could Help to Patrol Oceans According to Virginia Tech Study

Virginia Tech College of Engineering researchers just unveiled sea creature with a technological twist--it's a robotic jellyfish. 

At 5 foot 7 inches tall and weighing 170 pounds, the jellyfish is around the size and weight of a grown man.

The prototype robot, nicknamed Cyro, is a larger model of a robotic jellyfish the same team - headed by Shashank Priya of Blacksburg, Va., and professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech - unveiled in 2012. The earlier robot, dubbed RoboJelly, is roughly the size of a man's hand, and typical of jellyfish found along beaches, according to a press release.

"A larger vehicle will allow for more payload, longer duration and longer range of operation," said Alex Villanueva of St-Jacques, New-Brunswick, Canada, and a doctoral student in mechanical engineering working under Priya. "Biological and engineering results show that larger vehicles have a lower cost of transport, which is a metric used to determine how much energy is spent for traveling."

Partner universities in the project are Providence College in Rhode Island, the University of California Los Angeles, the University of Texas at Dallas, and Stanford University. Priya's team is building the jellyfish body models, integrating fluid mechanics and developing control systems.

Cyro is modeled and named after the jellyfish Cyanea capillata, Latin for Llion's Manemain jellyfish. Jellyfish, with "Cyro" derived from "cyanea" and "robot."

"We hope to improve on this robot and reduce power consumption and improve swimming performance as well as better mimic the morphology of the natural jellyfish," Villanueva said, adding that the project also allows researchers such as himself to better understand aquatic creatures live. "Our hopes for Cyro's future is that it will help understand how the propulsion mechanism of such animal scales with size."