Heroes in a half shell: autonomous robot sea turtles in development
Posted on by Unknown
Sure you could have a robot assist you around the home, or even one that'll make factories friendlier,
but we'll opt for a robot sea turtle any day of the week. The Swiss
folks over at ETH Zurich are working on making that a reality with the
Naro-Tartaruga, a turtle-inspired machine that would swim efficiently
while carrying cargo in its shell. It's currently a cylindrical aluminum
vessel with a couple of flippers, but concept designs include that
totally bad-ass bot in the image above. The turtle-bot has a top speed
of over 7 knots, so it'll handily beat any real sea turtle in a race,
and the big torso has enough space for battery and sensors that are
necessary for autonomous function. The fins on the turtle have a fully
three-dimensional mechanism -- there are three actuators per fin, and
each actuate the fin axle independently. The end goal is for the
development of underwater autonomous vehicles, which will hopefully
bring us one step closer to SeaQuest DSV. In the meantime, we'd like one
just so we can freak the hell out of our cats.
