The world of aquaculture now provides varied food sources to the human beings from all around the world. Potential surveys hint that in their daily food habits, humans consume about 50 percent of the total proteins from various foods based on fish, crustaceans, shellfish and other fish alike species. Therefore, safeguarding the world of pisciculture is perhaps a robust requirement for ensuring healthy treatment to fishes. Thus, with the focus on managing trustworthy underwater conditions, a group of researchers has created an artificial fish alike robot which can sense the environment of water for all the living fishes in it.
According to Phys Org, researchers from Bio-inspired Systems Lab at CAR UPM-CSIC have had joined hands with the group of researchers from the Chemical Department of University of Florence (Italy), to bring this autonomous vehicle in reality. The device is tiny in size, accounting to be of only 30 cms leaving up to its tail, but it can monitor and control the water quality and nutrition level at any sort of water body and thereby affords to ensure better health conditions and lesser psychological stress of fish.
Science Daily further pointed that to reduce fear among original fish and other water animals, the artificial vehicle has been built in a size and shape which mimics a real fish body. The device can move and go sideways as well as up down depending on water condition exactly like a fish. And to reject the effects of water acidity, the autonomous fish holds a special electrochemical pH sensor boasted on polyaniline film which evolves on the graphite screen-printed electrode surface. With this, the small robot can sense the underwater situation and thereby take potential measures.
As on the outlook, the robotic fish flaunts a latex-based skin with shape memory alloys actuators that bend a continuous flexible structure. The memory which as thick as 1 mm, is actually made of polycarbonates and it holds a set of additionally structured ribs which enables the fish to balance its mass in a massive flow of water.
