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Earth Robotics Science

Scientists Unveil Bionic Robo-fish To Remove Microplastics From Seas (theguardian.com) 21

Scientists have designed a tiny robot-fish that is programmed to remove microplastics from seas and oceans by swimming around and adsorbing them on its soft, flexible, self-healing body. From a report: Microplastics are the billions of tiny plastic particles which fragment from the bigger plastic things used every day such as water bottles, car tyres and synthetic T-shirts. They are one of the 21st century's biggest environmental problems because once they are dispersed into the environment through the breakdown of larger plastics they are very hard to get rid of, making their way into drinking water, produce, and food, harming the environment and animal and human health.

"It is of great significance to develop a robot to accurately collect and sample detrimental microplastic pollutants from the aquatic environment," said Yuyan Wang, a researcher at the Polymer Research Institute of Sichuan University and one of the lead authors on the study. Her team's novel invention is described in a research paper in the journal Nano Letters. "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example of such soft robots." Researchers at Sichuan University have revealed an innovative solution to track down these pollutants when it comes to water contamination: designing a tiny self-propelled robo-fish that can swim around, latch on to free-floating microplastics, and fix itself if it gets cut or damaged while on its expedition.

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Scientists Unveil Bionic Robo-fish To Remove Microplastics From Seas

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  • by Zondar ( 32904 ) on Thursday June 23, 2022 @03:46PM (#62645748)

    Not sure they've thought through this one completely...

    • There's always a bigger fish - Qui Gon Jinn
    • it becomes little lisa slurry!

    • It's flimflam. (Score:3, Interesting)

      These aren't actually going to be released to the claimed purpose, tiny robotic fish is a ridiculously inefficient way to accomplish this, even if they could somehow recharge fast enough to be useful, navigate, and perform a useful amount of plastic collecting relative to the waste of releasing them in the first place. It's an art project. The kind of piss poor solution that happens when emotional wankery overtakes engineering. This won't be worth using in anything larger than a small pond, and then as much
      • by Arethan ( 223197 )

        The kind of piss poor solution that happens when emotional wankery overtakes engineering.

        Just stopping by to say I generally agree with you, and applaud your clever dialogue -- "emotional wankery" was both poignant and amusing.

        Sadly, I disagree with your sig though.

        -1, I'm voting for the other guy is NOT AN OPTION

        In the US, all we seem to have left is voting for the lesser evil. It often feels like a choice between the worst human ever vs a turd sandwich. One day we'll get some useful election reform pushed through -- the only question will be whether it comes via typical legislation or an alternative avenue. Time will tell. Until then, we ge

        • Negative votes would accomplish this. It would nearly eliminate negative campaigning and render useless common arguments which. in practice, support the two party system. "If you don't vote for turd then douche will win" would no longer be true.
  • No study that simulates actual real-world exposure has shown microplastics to be clearly harmful to fish or mammals, let alone humans. For example, this study https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com] dosed up mice on quantities when scaled up to human levels is like being given IV microplastics for days. Even so the toxicity wasn't all that bad, which is the real surprise. I'm shocked the mice didn't just say fuck all this plastic and die.

    Do you know what is harmful to humans? Not having a job, starving, and being

    • by Merk42 ( 1906718 )

      We can detox the ocean when 99.99% of humans don't have to worry about food or shelter.

      Human beings, well known for being unable to do more than one thing at a time.

    • by Misagon ( 1135 )

      Fish have been seen to eat microplastics instead of real food, and consequently starving. It is a real threat to whole species in the food chain. The food chain that humans are at the top of.

      • I think you're conflating two things: microplastics, which are too small to see (or eat), and plastic trash, which certainly would harm fish that tried to eat it.

    • We can detox the ocean when 99.99% of humans don't have to worry about food or shelter.

      If we don't detox the ocean then there might be even more people without food or shelter.

  • Better idea... stop using plastics so that we don't have to fish the micro plastics out of the water. We need more $$$ put into research into alternatives that are sustainable. Plastics are not the way forward into the future.

  • This is how it starts! :-)
  • And they made a few, are they going to make a billion of them? probably not.

  • Do these fish produce 3D poop ?

  • How are these fishy filter'ers powered? Do they have usb-c ports for recharging? On-board mini-nuke plants?

  • Scientists Unveil Larger Bionic Robo-Fish to Remove Nuisance Smaller Bionic Robo-Fish From Seas
  • This is literally a composite material, formed in the shaped of a goldfish food snack. The locomotion is provided by an external laser light source.
    This gets a 0% on the reality scale. What a bunch of news trash - some journalist and their editor just got snowed by fancy sounding word salad.

    • I don't know how good these Sichuan University scientists are at polymer research but they are top notch at spinning a story that the media will ingest without much questioning.
  • "and adsorbing them on its soft, flexible, self-healing body. "

    The self-healing doesn't even come into it.

    What does it DO when its exterior is fully adsorbed?
    Swim 10.000 miles to a plastic depot?

It was kinda like stuffing the wrong card in a computer, when you're stickin' those artificial stimulants in your arm. -- Dion, noted computer scientist

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