BEIJING: Robot fish that will “eat” microplastics may one day help to cleanup the world’s contaminated oceans, says a team of Chinese scientists from Sichuan University in southwest China.
Soft to touch and 1 . 3 centimetres in size, these programs already suck up microplastics in superficial water.
The team aims to enable them to collect microplastics in deeper water and provide information to evaluate marine pollution in real time, said Wang Yuyan, one of the researchers that developed the robotic.
“We developed such a lightweight miniaturised robot. It can be used in many ways, for example in biomedical or hazardous functions, such a small robot that can be localised to a part of your body to help you eliminate some condition. ”
The black robot seafood is irradiated by a light, helping this to flap its fins and shake its body. Scientists can control the particular fish using the light to avoid it a crash into other fish or ships.
If it is accidentally consumed by other seafood, it can be digested with no harm as it is manufactured from polyurethane, which is also biocompatible, Wang said.
The fish is able to absorb pollutants plus recover itself even when it is damaged. It may swim up to 2 . 76 body measures per second, faster than most artificial soft robots.
“We are mostly working on collection (of microplastics). It is like a sample robot and it may be used repeatedly, ” she said.