Robotic Fish Track Targets, Communicate With One Another

Roland Piquepaille writes "Many of today's underwater robots need to periodically come up to the surface to communicate with their human supervisors. But researchers at the University of Washington (UW) have developed a new kind of underwater vehicle. The 'Robofish' can work cooperatively with each other. 'The Robofish, which are roughly the size of a 10-pound salmon, look a bit like fish because they use fins rather than propellers.' According to the researchers, such robots 'could cooperatively track moving targets underwater, such as groups of whales or spreading plumes of pollution, or explore caves, underneath ice-covered waters, or in dangerous environments where surfacing might not be possible.' Further information and more pictures are also available for these autonomous fin-actuated underwater vehicles."

Anyone else miss the cold war?

According to the researchers, such robots 'could cooperatively track moving targets underwater, such as groups of whales...

Anyone else miss the cold war? In the eighties the press release about such gizmos would have mentioned "commie subs poised to vaporize Dick, Jane and their good ol' American homestead on a few minutes notice." Instead, we're left with following "groups of whales" around - sheesh.

Re:Anyone else miss the cold war?

Actually just wait a bit more. the Former USSR is now pissed at the USA once again. (Something about our asshole practices of pushing our laws on them) and poised to whip the populace back up in a Hate amarica furvor once again.

Oh and they still have the ability to kill every single man woman and child on this planet in less than 12 hours.

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It might also have something to do with them oppressing the freedom of speech, and tampering with the election system on a massive scale, and generally behaving more and more like a dictatorship.

Of course, I'm talking about Russia, not the US, though I'll

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Even more. Putin started camps for kids that are in principle very similar to HitlerJugend. There's also a quite a big nationalist movement in Russia.

There's a big chance that new cold war will start but it'll be much different that the previous one. It ca

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Don't blame it on the era, blame it on the journalists. If they had a bit of imagination they could have suggested it's use in catching rafts of illegal immigrants or maybe Muslim suicide bomber dolphins. Allah Akiikiikiiba!

They will probably send

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No problems for sharks to digest - they will cut them before to pieces with their lasers.

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Australia was never at war with Eurasia. Australia has always been at war with Eastasia.

But.. do they fart?

An Ig Noble award was for Fish Flatulence as a means of communication [bioedonline.org].

So we just need to create a robotic Bender, that burps and has an exploding ass, to really understand nature.

Skin depth -- why submarines use VLF radio

They talk about trouble with communications while underwater, but the Skin effect [wikipedia.org] describes how in a conductive media (say, seawater), various frequencies of electromagnetic waves are attenuated with distance. In short, high frequencies travel less distance into the material than lower frequencies. This is why the requirements for shielding of different electronics can be very different -- higher operating frequency implies thinner shielding. And of course it's also why submarines use very low frequencies to communicate. (See also LORAN positioning system [wikipedia.org].)

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! [nerdkits.com]

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Salmon sized fish, huh? Once they release these into the ocean, they aren't going to last very long against the sea lions. Of course, we could solve the sea lion problem with a robotic orca...

Prey

What happens when another fish mistakenly eats the robofish?

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I'm very interested in the answer your question, as I'm sure the materials used to manufacture this robo fish are incredibly poisonous.

I can't believe the forward thinking about oceanic pollution when it comes to putting devices like this in the water is n

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I'm guessing you have never watched a fish tank for any period of time. Even gold fish who tend to try eating everything will have a taste and ignore it after. Now, if the robo-fish gets any algae on it, it could be problematic as that would make it taste

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To compare the toxicity of an electronically guided fish to a sunken boat...is a little excessive IMHO not only that, you're approaching this from the perspective that sunken boats, depending on what their cargo was, and how recent the boat was manufacture

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"I'm very interested in the answer your question, as I'm sure the materials used to manufacture this robo fish are incredibly poisonous."

Why are you "sure" of that?

Most of the materials are obvious (metal, plastic, printed circuit board, battery) so unless

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It is written: this too shall come to pass.

need a better apronym

Instead of calling them "autonomous fin-actuated underwater vehicles", perhaps they could call them "autonomous fin-inducted submarine hybrid" or just AFISH for short...

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/. memes dying, netcraft confirms

You can bet your bottom dollar...

The first time a fisherman accidentally catches one of these things, I have no doubt he'll swear it weighed at least 30 pounds, was half the length of his boat and towed him around the bay for half an hour.

When he realized what he had, of course, he released it.

Surf Patrol

They need to make one roughly the size of a killer whale that targets and chases sharks out of areas where people engage in water activities, such as surfing.

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Yeah, but falling down my stairs doesn't scare the fuck out of me.

Why?

I don't understand why people try to apply electric motors to linear propulsion. The reason animals use linear propulsion is because they use linear "motors" called muscles.

If we were to develop synthetic muscles, then and only then does linear propulsion

Forget SkyNet

Here comes FishNet!

Roland's blogspam

In every one of Roland Piquepaille's submissions he links to his own blog at the nd "Further information...". This of course is just stuff he's plagiarised from the original sites. Slashdot encourages this thief and rewards him by linking him on the front

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No, then they will leave a message "So long and thanks for all the fish".