Will Revolutionize the Sport of Fishing
This is the next thing after sonar!
Watch out – robots are now fast and strong enough to catch live fish and kick balls underwater, according to a group of engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The fancy gizmos aren't like the conventional metallic, rigid droids people often imagine when thinking of robots. These bots are squishy, transparent …
If you watch the video, you'll notice that they are actuators. The fish grabber is an actuator which has a transparent rod/tube at the top going up to the surface. What you don't see is the operator with his thumb on a syringe plunger and a concentrated expression on his face as he tries to catch the fish.
"If you watch the video, you'll notice that they are actuators. The fish grabber is an actuator which has a transparent rod/tube at the top going up to the surface. What you don't see is the operator with his thumb on a syringe plunger"
It's all about which is the difficult part. The operator could be easily replaced with a motor attached to an RPi, or any number of off-the-shelf or cheap and easy bespoke systems. The interesting part is that they've managed to make a hydrogel grabber arm capable of catching fish; whether it's currently attached to a robot or simply demonstrating how it could be used when attached to a robot doesn't really matter.
Yes, well, it would be a LOT more impressive if it would be catching fish it located on its own using its transparent RPi and transparent camera powered by its transparent pump supplied from its transparent LiPo battery. Oh, and it's totally a robot if all those "robot wars" armoured RC cars robots are robots...
Well, the guy who made Sea Monkeys into a thing also sold "invisible goldfish" for a while.
Accordion type grabbers have been used on robots for years / decades, drive by compressed gas or a hydrolic system..
The only new thing here is the 3D printed hydro gel
And as for a hand, as these are X amount water, wonder how long they last in the dry air /sun,
Even the fish they caught, seems to have been corralled into the glass where it could not escape and grabbed..
Hyped up !
To drive the field of robotics forward at warp speed under a shower of cash, we don't need bomb disposal bots or elder assistance. We need... robo-gladiators!
Think it through. Televised matches would probably be hugely successful. All the drama of gladiators without the ethical problems of mutilated humans, and easier to identify with than a metal wedge on wheels. A successful Fight Night program would generate cash, where "grant application for robotics development" does not. Get some team identity going and you open up merchandising sales. Active warfare rapidly drives innovation, so teams would constantly be pushing, upgrading and trying new things, partially funded by their cut of the Fight Night take.
And of course, these improvements would naturally find their way into the assistance and companion bots as well! It's a weird and indirect research funding model, but I believe it would work. And also make for some awesome spectacle, yeah there is that.