Researchers create robotic ‘thinking’ sea turtle

Researchers have created a robotic 'thinking' sea turtle that can detect nuclear wastes and navigate to areas deemed hazardous for humans, in addition to performing tasks like surveillance and energy harvesting, www.thenewsreports.com reported. The novel feature of the system is that that it does not use a ballast system.

According to the Indian-origin researchers, in the underwater robotic world, turtle robots were among the most manoeuvrable.

The Singapore University of Technology and Design team led by associate professor S K Panda was putting the final touches to a robotic sea turtle, which could move about underwater, including diving to deeper depths vertically, like a real turtle, by only using its front and hind limb gait movements.

Panda said the turtle robot did not use a ballast system, commonly used in underwater robots for diving or sinking functions.

Sans the ballast system, it was much smaller and lighter, which allowed it to carry bigger payloads so that it could perform more complicated tasks such as surveillance, water quality monitoring in Singapore reservoir or energy harvesting for long endurance.

Panda added that being able to do a dynamic dive of sinking vertically meant that it could also enter vertical tunnels or pipes in the seabed with very small diameters.

Asian Scientist reported that turtle robot was also able to self-charge, further reducing the need for it to return to base station for recharging. It was agile and capable of turning sharp corners with small radii, without losing speed.

Panda said a swarm of tiny turtles which communicated with each other and acted collaboratively to perform their duties could be built. With improved maneuverability they could go to tiny and narrow places like crevices where bigger vessels were not able to reach, he added.

According to Abhra Roy Chowdhury, who had been working towards lifelike underwater robots for the last three years for his PhD, the team had designed and developed four other underwater prototypes - a spherical robot that mimicked puffer fish in structure but used a jet propulsion technique similar to jellyfishes and squids and three robotic fishes of different morphologies. These robots were scalable, modular and possessed stealth (ability to avoid detection) features.

If needed, all their merits could be combined in a single robot, he added.

The first robot took Chowdhury three years to develop and in the process he spent a considerable amount of time studying the maneuverablity and energy efficient movements of real fish.