Bio-inspired robotic vehicles are becoming ubiquitous in the tech world due to the evolving fields of animatronics and biomimetics. These robotic creatures are capable of advancing our understanding of the biological world around us while also benefitting us in the form of technologies inspired by naturally perfected systems and processes. Recently, a team of graduate engineers at Virginia Tech have created an eight-armed autonomous robotic jellyfish named. This new take on the jellybot is the continued work of a previous robot, RoboJelly, which dwarfed in comparison - Cryo measures in at an impressive 5 ft in length and a weight of 170 lbs.
With the help of a multi-university funded research grant, Cryo was developed as a future means for monitoring oceanic environments, studying aquatic wildlife, mapping unknown deep-water regions, and still simultaneously building the Navy a future underwater surveillance recruit.
The jellyfish was chosen for this application thanks to its incredibly efficient hydrodynamic form of transportation. The abundant ocean creatures come in a variety of shapes and sizes and consume little energy as they travel due to low metabolic rates. When asked why Cryo was built to its current size, engineering doctoral student and team member Alex Villanueva had this to say:
"A larger vehicle will allow for more payload, longer duration and longer range of operation. 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."
Unlike the RoboJelly predecessor, Cyro is powered by a rechargeable nickel-metal hydride battery that give the robot 5 hours of continuous swim time between charges. The mechanical arms that simulate the jelly-like swimming motion are driven by a set of DC motors, and the implementation of on-board sensors have already proven its ability to capture environmental data. To top it off, Cyro is dressed in a thick layer of silicone laid over a bowl-shaped cover that mimics the mesoglea covering a real-life jelly’s body.
With a few years, left before Cryo sees real-life action, students are already hard at work on the next jelly-inspired prototype. Much of the focus will be on developing the robot to operate on its own for up to a few months without the need for maintenance or a recharge. It is uncertain what the Navy plans to do with the research findings, but the Virginia Tech team’s progress is making a good case for future stealthy underwater surveillance bots. All in all, the projects head professor Shashank Priya remains optimistic about the beneficial impacts the research will have in the world:
"It has been a great experience to finally realize the biomimetic and bio-inspired robotic vehicles. Nature has too many secrets and we were able to find some of them but many still remain. We hope to find a mechanism to continue on this journey and resolve the remaining puzzles."
Check out the video below to catch Cryo in action for yourself:
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