SoFi, the robotic fish, was developed by researchers at MIT and is the first to withstand the pressure and currents of a real ocean environment for an extended amount of time. It can handle about 60 feet of water depths and 40 minutes of swimming at a time. SoFi navigates in 3 dimensions: up, down, left, right, and forward and features a fisheye camera. This soft-bodied robot is a about a foot and a half long with a weight of 3.5 pounds. Its soft rubber tail moves side to side as a hydraulic pump moves water in it. The diver can be up to 50 feet away from SoFi and still control the robot with its remote. Fish appear to be able to swim unalarmed alongside SoFi. UPDATE: Because many of its parts were 3-D-printed, SoFi is relatively inexpensive to reproduce.
Click here to read more (about its features, the challenges faced while creating and designing this robot, and what the future holds with SoFi)
Q1) Do you think a robot like this is beneficial or a waste of time and resources?
I think this robot is beneficial because this is the first model for this type of robot, and with the improvements that are sure to come, we eventually may be able to send it underwater deeper than 60 feet for days without having to have someone in the water to control it.
Q2) What aspect of SoFi do you think is the most important to improve? (i.e. water depths, time, communication, vision)
I think that depth capability is the most important improvement to focus on. While increasing communication and duration of swimming time would be convenient, the water depth capability needs improvement for more than just the sake of convenience.
Replies
Well done Maya!
1. I think it is cool and people can see down there to see how fish are acting and if something is going wrong then they could go try to fix it.
2. I think it should be able to go deeper and stand more pressure from the water. It should also be able to pick things up if it is detected as a harm to the environment.
Impressive perspective on the uses of this robot. There could be different models of this type of robot for different uses. In this case, it would be good to stick to the fish design even if we are not trying to study behavior in order to not cause large disturbances in cleaning up the ocean if that is a way it was used. Way to think out of the scientific box.
I think it is benifical to see whats going down in the deep blue sea. It could help with the pollution and many things about SoFI. Communication and Vision too see the sea different animals.
I think it can benefit us with helping many sea creatures and with helping pollution and just many things. probably the depth or something like that because there are so many people that think the ocean floor is just an unsolved puzzle. Most people have a clue what the floor looks like but I have a feeling it's totally different.
I think it is preety cool to see our science be involved. I don't know what it would be exactaly doing to help or do anything though. I think the depth into the ocean is the biggest thing the could improve on.
Right now it can't do much besides what current technology has already been able to do, but this is the first step in the bigger picture of exploring parts of the ocean we've never seen before.
I think that this is very cool and will work to watch the garbage in the ocean they should do this in lakes and rivers too. I wounder if these would attract bigger fish or scare other fish. Maybe they could put some hooks on it and fish with it. thats what i would do.
I think that it is cool and now we can learn more about sea cretures more than we have ever been able to before, I think that water depths is the most important because that could be some really cool stuff down there
I'd say that it's both because it really all depends on how we humans use it. Communication is probably key. If we can't get the information why build a robot in the first place?
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