U-CAT Robotic Sea Turtle Set To Explore Shipwrecks

Zothecula writes "When was the last time you heard about a sea turtle getting stuck in a shipwreck? Never, that's when. Although that's partly because stuck turtles rarely make the news, it's also due to the fact that they're relatively small and highly maneuverable. With that in mind, the European Union-funded ARROWS project has created U-CAT – a prototype robotic sunken-ship-exploring sea turtle."

Aaahhhh - it looks cute!

[Chrisq]

More like a bath toy than a research sub

Re:Aaahhhh - it looks cute!

[robthebloke]

Hopefully when the tech has matured and mutated for 15 years or so, it'll be swimming in sewers. I imagine it will have developed a love of renaissance artists by them....

Re:

[weilawei]

Technology for sewer monitoring is incredibly difficult. Active componentry, and even passive componentry tends to fail at an alarming rate due to being immersed in a chemical soup of practically arbitrary composition.

Re:

[nospam007]

"Technology for sewer monitoring is incredibly difficult. Active componentry, and even passive componentry tends to fail at an alarming rate due to being immersed in a chemical soup of practically arbitrary composition."

Obviously they must be fixed on top of the sewer crocodiles.

Re:

[camperdave]

... due to being immersed in a chemical soup of practically arbitrary composition.

The sort of chemical soup that might, um... mutate.. a turtle in a sewer?

It's Turtles

[weilawei]

All the way down.

I for one ....

[cascadingstylesheet]

I for one welcome ... ah, forget it.

Tallinn mentioned

[jones_supa]

Hey, those guys are from Estonia! Greetings from Finland to our "little brother" (who is actually doing better than us).

It won't work without some modifications..

[Anonymous Coward]

Real sea turtles have their shell covering the working edges of their flippers - if stuck, they can pull them into/under the shell to clear them of obstructions.

This thing will get stuck on any kind of vertical string - whether it be a kelp strand, or wire. And it can't pull its fins out of the way.

Ha!

[rotorbudd]

When I first glanced at the title I saw : US Robotics.

They gonna run a POTS line to the ocean floor?

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Just Curious

[rmdingler]

Has the anthropomorphization/zoomorphization of robotics aided the technology's development by taking advantage of evolutionary designs or has it been saddled with this rather human propensity to do so? Both?

When?

[Ralph Spoilsport]

When was the last time you heard about a sea turtle getting stuck in a shipwreck? Never, that's when.

When was the last time a sea turtle ever reported to a human that they were trapped in a shipwreck? Never, that's when, and that's why you've never heard about a sea turtle getting stuck in a shipwreck. It's not that it doesn't happen, its that it's never reported due do the fact that turtles and people don't speak the same language...