SOFT AND SLEEK: Researchers have designed a marine robot that blends in with its environment (above) and moves by contracting artificial muscles to perform an undulating motion resembling that of an eel larva (below).
JACOBS SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING, UC SAN DIEGO
A flattened, almost completely transparent object moves slowly through the water. In its appearance, the colorless structure somewhat resembles an eel larva—and for good reason: this marine robot was designed with a leptocephalus, the name of a curious stage in the lifecycle of several eel species, in mind.
“We want to make a soft robot that can swim around coral reefs without damaging them,” says Caleb Christianson, a doctoral student at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), who has been working on a prototype for more than a year and a half.
Marine robots have various uses. The oil and gas industries use unmanned vehicles for tasks such as ...
