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Robotic black ghost knifefish or the "GhostBot"

submitted by vaporlock

1 decade 3 years 9 months 4 weeks ago

"This robot's design was based on the morphology of the Amazonian black ghost knifefish, a shimmying fish that swims vertically to navigate tree roots. This fishbot was built for a project spearheaded by Professor Malcolm MacIver of Northwestern University."

from here
http://io9.com/5738190/meet-the-robotic-ghost-knifefish-the-cyberfish-who-will-tame-the-roiling-seas

From the press release:

MacIver, a robotics expert who served as a scientific consultant for "Tron: Legacy" and is science advisor for the television series "Caprica," has studied the knifefish for years. Working with Neelesh Patankar, associate professor of mechanical engineering and co-author of the paper, he has created mechanical models of the fish in hopes of better understanding how the nervous system sends messages throughout the body to make it move.
Planning for the robot — called GhostBot — began when graduate student Oscar Curet, a co-author of the paper, observed a knifefish suddenly moving vertically in a tank in MacIver's lab.
"We had only tracked it horizontally before," said MacIver, a recent recipient of the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. "We thought, ‘How could it be doing this?'"