Swimming Lamprey Robot

Posted 27 Jun 2001 at 13:00 UTC by The Swirling Brain

At the bottom of the page there's this article from UPI about a new kind of lamprey robot. No, it's not the gross cyborg lamprey brain connected to a biscuit bot. It's a snake-like swimming bot mimmicking a lamprey eel's swimming locomotion. This Lamprey Robot is based on the work of Joseph Ayres and the Biomemetric Underwater Robot Program (aka BURP) at Northeastern University. The researchers make the underwater swimming robot to undulate in S shapes and the speed of the bot is proportional to the frequency of the wave pattern of this S form. This bot has all sorts of sensors to detect roll, pitch, inclination, has a compass, and will someday incorporate a sonar, and check it out, they use Nitinol wire for the artificial muscles! The article goes on to talk about that these lamprey bots may someday perform military underwater maneuvers! How would you like to see a bunch of swimming snakes come up out of the water and then storm the beaches? Yikes! I hate snakes!