Robo Fish to Monitor The World's Oceans
If you notice a school of menacing-looking metallic carp pass by you while you're snorkeling off the coast of Spain, don't freak out. You're most likely not going to get to name a previously undiscovered species. A group of scientists from the UK-based BMT Group have developed a school of robo-fish that will soon be released into the sea to monitor pollution levels. Their first mission: monitor the Port of Gijon in nothern Spain.
The fish will use WiFi technology to send information from their pollution monitoring sensors back to mission control, allowing BMT researchers to develop real time pollution maps.
Robo-fish will also be equipped with advanced autonomous navigation systems, which will enable them to swim around the port without any human interaction. When they start to run out of juice (they've got about 8 hours of run time), these robo-carp will automatically return to mission control, aka the "charging hub." Says senior research scientist from BMT, Rory Doyle:
"In using robotic fish we are building on a design created by hundreds of millions of years' worth of evolution which is incredibly energy efficient."[via CleanTechnica]













