Fear of robots? Automatonophobia is the technical term for it. Fear of Sharks? It’s called Selachophobia.
But now, I think the Psychiatrists will have to come up with a new term that could be called the fear of the thing that the U.S. Navy has deployed, the Robot Shark.
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| The GhostSwimmer: Robot Shark |
The U.S. Navy has deployed an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) and they call it Navy’s GhostSwimmer. The GhostSwimmer is five-foot-long, weighs at 100-pound and looks very much like a shark. According to naval researchers, it has competed testing and is ready to join the fleet.
The GhostSwimmer is based on the bio-metric design principles, in which Engineers leverage millions of years of biological evolution to create machines and systems that have the ability to emulate animals or natural processes.
"It swims just like a fish does by oscillating its tail fin back and forth," said Michael Rufo, director of Boston Engineering’s Advanced Systems Group, on the Navy’s GhostSwimmer project page. He also added, "The unit is a combination of unmanned systems engineering and unique propulsion and control capabilities.”
According to the sources, the Navy plans to use the GhostSwimmer for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions as well as hull inspections of friendly ships. This shark robot can be operated autonomously for extended periods of time on battery power, or it can be controlled with a 500-foot tether.
Till now, the Navy has not disclosed the fact on how exactly the GhostSwimmer transmits and receives data, but according to the press materials, the robot has to periodically surface to download the information it has collected.
The GhostSwimmer has definitely become a part of and joined the ranks of animal-based awesome/creepy robots like the “Cheetah” that can run at nearly 30 mph, the Stickybot that climbs like a gecko, and the cockroach-inspired iSprawl that can cover 7.5 feet per second. And it may get a baby brother too: The Department of Homeland Security has been funding development of a similar, smaller robot called the BIOSwimmer.
Want to have a look of the Navy’s GhostSwimmer? Here’s a video for you:
And if you are a part of the marine mammal community, here a good news for you: Designers are also hoping that the GhostSwimmer could also be used to sniff off the underwater mines, taking place of the bottle-nose dolphins and sea lions the navy currently trains to do the task.
Source: Wired
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