Soft Robotic Fish

By Andrew Marchese

Built by a team of researchers at MIT, this soft robotic fish mimics the motions of a real fish. Soft robots’ movements are generated by pumping liquid through channels. This creates fluid movement and a robot capable of using its environment to reach its destination.

The fish can even perform an escape maneuver nearly as fast as a real fish. It is able to rapidly convulse by releasing CO2 from a canister in the abdomen into the tail. Adjusting the diameter of the nozzle releasing Co2 will change the velocity of the fish’s escape maneuver. And, keeping the gas nozzle opened for a long period of time can result in severe changes of direction-even up to 100 degrees.

Check out the fish’s movements in the video below.

Click here to read more about this project.

Tags: Robots XBee