Technology is coming close and closer to mimicking life, and the implications are incredible. Covert surveillance athletic competition, maritime safety, and biological ecosystem preservation can all benefit from these advances…but really, some of these are just friggin’ cool.
1. The Salamander Swimming Robot: For the land to water and/or water to land transitions, this guy’s got skills. The salamander robots’ interlocking vertebrate and snake-like swimming style, make it much smoother in the water.
2. The Robotic Ray: This robot swims with enough grace and beauty that at first glance you might think this is a real stringray.
3- The Robot Octopus with “Shape-memory Alloy”
http://youtu.be/45Dc36dbQC8
4 – FestoFish – Festo has actually designed an “air penguin,” SmartBird and a jellyfish as well. This fish is remarkable because of how natural it looks. Under remote control guidance, and what they call “Fluidic Muscles” that mimic the biomechanics of real, breathing organisms. What’s really remarkable about Festo’s creations is that in tests, real animals have responded as though they were natural beings (specifically, their bird.)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg30029bM58
5- AQUA Swimming & Walking Robot: This one’s not as exciting, but it’s the only robot that uses up and down fin propulsion.
6- Finnegan the RoboTurtle (April 2008)
7- Duke Engineering Underwater Robot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0DIAXJrqjo
8- NCSU Underwater Robotics: This guy looks like he wants to be a synchronized swimmer.
9- Robot Breaststroke Swimmer
10 – The Swimming Humaniod Robot (Swumanoid): This one’s billed as a research tool for swimwear companies, but I don’t think they’re there yet with this unit. Hardcore swimmers are far more fluid in the water. The robot’s herky jerky style doesn’t translate to a real swimmers’ technique. However, I think they;re getting close. Prediction: Expect to see a robot training buddy, probably from some company like FINIS, in the not too distant future.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S8dNe-kG1c
11 – Evolta: ‘Evolta’s height is just one-tenth of a grown man, so we figured out that it would take it 10 times more time (to complete an Ironman),’ creator Tomotaka Takahashi told the Dailymail.com. This little guy has swum, run and cycled over 140 miles.
12 – PacX Wave Glider – Affectionately known as “Papa Mau,” this robot set the World Record by traveling 9,000 nautical miles from San Francisco, California to Queensland, Australia…fully autonomously. This is by far the most high-tech of the above robots – wonder if this one could have some application for safety monitoring in open water swims?
This the “Top 1o Sites for Swim Meets” here.
