UK: Robot fish to be released into the sea to detect pollution

Record ID: 401596

  • Title: UK: Robot fish to be released into the sea to detect pollution
  • Date: 26th March 2009
  • Summary: UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX, WIVENHOE, ESSEX, UK (MARCH 24,2009) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF ROBOT IN THE UNIVERSITY COMPUTER SCIENCE LABORATORY PROFESSOR HUOSHENG HU IN THE SCHOOL OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX. SOUNDBITE (ENGLISH): PROFESSOR HUOSHENG HU, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX SAYING: "After thousands of years of evolution fish actually have tremendous
  • Embargoed: 10th April 2009 13:00
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  • Topics: Science / Technology,Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
  • Reuters ID: LVA1AO0G66A9CT4PUCC2WN47AS2
  • Story Text: Robot fish developed by British scientists are to be released into the sea off north Spain to detect pollution.
    If next year's trial of the first five robotic fish in the northern Spanish port of Gijon is successful, the team hopes they will be used in rivers, lakes and seas across the world.
    The carp-shaped robots, costing 20,000 pounds ($29,000) apiece, mimic the movement of real fish and will be equipped with chemical sensors to sniff out potentially hazardous pollutants, such as leaks from vessels or underwater pipelines.
    They will transmit the information back to shore using ultrasound.
    Unlike earlier robotic fish, which needed remote controls, they will be autonomous, navigating independently without any human interaction.
    Professor Huosheng Hu, School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at the University of Essex in England is developing the robots and says opting to make their robots the shape of a fish rather than a submarine was a natural choice.
    "After thousands of years of evolution fish actually have tremendous efficiency produced by the fish animals. None of the robotic systems so far can match that kind of performance so that's what we really wanted to work on to actually bring that gap more close to nature's system," he said.
    The robots will work together to examine the water quality in an area like a port, communicating with each other and using artificial intelligence developed by British programmers at engineering company BMT Group.
    "Each fish is intelligent on its own…and the whole shoal of the fish is much more intelligent than any individual," said BMT research scientist Luke Speller.
    Professor Hu says allowing robots to work together makes them more effective. "...As we know more people working together generates more efficiency…if you only have one robot the system could fail at any time but if we have multiple robots then a single robot failure doesn't cause too the whole operation to fail," he said.
    The robot fish will be 1.5 meters (nearly 5 feet) long -- roughly the size of a seal.
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