New technology usually makes waves when it’s flashy, but this project from MIT Distributed Robotics Laboratory takes place ominously under the waves. Its upshot is an independently operating fish that swims realistically and reacts with self-protective behaviors, dubbed the Autonomous Soft Robot Fish, which is a terrible acronym and awesome idea. Soft robots are robots whose bodies are powered by pressure within “flexible channels,” rather than a rigid structure. They’re also often literally softer, made of materials less damaging to spongy-bodied humans. What this all means is that the fish’s silicone body is flexed and powered by pressurizing internal chambers, in this case long channels cut down each side of the tail. As they put it, “carbon dioxide released from a canister in the fish’s abdomen causes the channel to inflate, bending the tail in the opposite direction.”
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