[youtube width=”680″ height=”400″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2OSJQhHQp8[/youtube]
If you needed any more convincing to look to nature for engineering inspiration, the Robojelly is just the latest in a long line of robots taking a page from oceanic and aquatic creatures. Like robotic fish, robotic snails and the aptly named GhostBot, Robojelly is a new creation that not only trolls the ocean’s water, but it is also powered by it.
The Robojelly is engineered with an alchemy of black powder, nanotubes, titanium, and memory alloys beyond our comprehension which “react” to the hydrogen in water to produce the rhythmic contraction that keeps the jellyfish robot aloft in the water column. Like so many high tech robot project, Robojelly is still just a novel engineering project confined to laboratory settings but if these could be miniaturized, Robojelly could be a better inhabitant of jellyfish tanks whose suitability for real live jellyfish is questionable. [Gizmodo]
