Propelled by squirting jets of water and trailing LED tentacles, the Squidbot has been designed by engineers at the University of California San Diego to explore the oceans on its own, snapping photos as it makes its squidlike way through the blue depths. Here’s more from the UC San Diego Jacob School of Engineering:
“Essentially, we recreated all the key features that squids use for high-speed swimming,” said Michael T. Tolley, one of the paper’s senior authors and a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC San Diego. “This is the first untethered robot that can generate jet pulses for rapid locomotion like the squid and can achieve these jet pulses by changing its body shape, which improves swimming efficiency.”
This squid robot is made mostly from soft materials such as acrylic polymer, with a few rigid, 3D printed and laser cut parts. Using soft robots in underwater exploration is important to protect fish and coral, which could be damaged by rigid robots. But soft robots tend to move slowly and have difficulty maneuvering.
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