Students Built A Robot Fish Named Eve To Solve Mysteries Of The Ocean
Studying ocean life is not always a simple task, as most aquatic life are startled at the presence of a human being or large equipment. There is also a risk of disturbing a fragile ecosystem, such as a coral reef. Surf-eDNA aims to solve both issues with its biometric soft robotic fish capable of autonomous underwater navigation, ideally suited for minimally invasive data gathering.
Part of what makes Eve useful for investigating areas of the ocean, such as coral reefs, is its ability to swim autonomously via a camera and sonar combination. When paired together with an algorithm, it allows the robotic fish to avoid obstacles as it swims about.
“By making Eve look like a fish, we are able to be minimally invasive into the ecosystem that we’re surveying,” master’s student Dennis Baumann remarked in a recent interview. He added the biomimetic design should prevent other fish or sea life from being startled by Eve’s presence, explaining, “We can mix, we can mingle in the ecosystem.”
Another useful feature is a filter that can collect DNA from the environment, known as “eDNA,” as it swims around. The collected eDNA samples can then be sent to a laboratory for sequencing to help identify what species live in that body of water. According to Surf-eDNA, an eDNA filter will be embedded inside the robotic fish to collect valuable information about the ecosystem’s biodiversity.
“All of the animals that are in the environment, they shed their DNA, so there’s DNA floating around that we can find,” Martina Lüthi, a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich, remarked to CNN in an interview.
The group hope Eve, the robotic fish, will one day give scientists a more detailed image of the vast oceans which cover 70% of Earth, which most has yet to be explored. Baumann concluded, “We want to build a reliable tool for biologists. Maybe we can prevent species from being endangered or dying out.”
