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BLACKSBURG, Va. — Jellyfish may be getting some alien company soon, as a group of Virgina Tech engineers are perfecting robot jellyfish to dwell among the living.
The group's robot prototype, dubbed Cyro, is part of a $5 million project funded by the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center. Once perfected, robotic jellyfish like Cyro could be used for conducting military surveillance, cleaning oil spills or monitoring the environment.
Because jellyfish can adapt to almost any water environment, including both fresh and saltwater, an incognito robotic jellyfish could easily go undetected.
Cyro is 5 feet 7 inches in length and a whopping 170 pounds, essentially the size of a full-grown man. With eight long, metal arms and countless wires protected by waterproof technology, Cyro is being used to learn how to replicate a jellyfish's natural movements.
"We're dealing with a type of propulsion that isn't commonly studied. It's not like a boat or a submarine," Alex Villanueva, a doctoral student working on the project, said in a video about the jellyfish. "We have flexible parts, we've got a lot of parts moving."
Wiring a robot to move like a jellyfish doesn't come without its challenges. First, the researchers needed to make sure the electronics inside the robot were secure enough to withstand weeks or months of underwater movement. Then they needed to figure out how to replicate the jellyfish's mesoglea, the mushroom-like organ on top of the creature.
"The artificial mesoglea is basically a big blob of silicone," Villanueva said. "We use the same type of silicone that is used for making masks that you see in movies and things like that. It's very soft, which mimics the properties of the natural animal and basically that's the jelly of the jellyfish."
The group of researches plans to leave Cyro in the ocean as long as they can, which could be weeks, months or longer, to see how long the energy source can last and what improvements can be made to make it more efficient.
