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The RoboTuna is a robotic fish project involving a series of robotic fish designed and built by a team of scientists at the
The RoboTuna is a robotic fish project involving a series of robotic fish designed and built by a team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...
(MIT) in the US.
The Project
The project started in 1993. Their aim was to investigate the possibility of constructing a robotic submarine that could reproduce the way tunas swim and see if they could find a superior system of propulsion for theAutonomous Underwater Vehicles
In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy, from , ''autonomos'', from αὐτο- ''auto-'' "self" and νόμος ''nomos'', "law", hence when combined understood to mean "one who gives oneself one' ...
(AUVs). Their experiment was a success as they discovered that their fish was both more maneuverable and used less energy than other robotic submarines. The Science Museum in London, UK has one on display in their geophysics and oceanography section .
Improvements
While the early results were successful the RoboTuna was not able to replicate the bursts of acceleration that real tuna were able to manage. Researchers improved the design using agenetic algorithm
In computer science and operations research, a genetic algorithm (GA) is a metaheuristic inspired by the process of natural selection that belongs to the larger class of evolutionary algorithms (EA). Genetic algorithms are commonly used to ge ...
, in which the best systems will "get to have virtual offspring" according to researcher David Barrett. Early incarnations worked poorly but as the system evolved the RoboTuna's abilities improved. Visualization techniques showed that the system had evolved so that the RoboTuna was taking advantage of vortices that it created. A swish of its tail one way creating a vortex, which was then used by a swish the other way - propelling it off the vortex it had created. This technique not only helps to with normal swimming but explains the impressive standing start speeds of real tuna.
The Researchers
The team involved in the project included: Michael Triantafyllou, David Barrett who built the first RoboTuna (Charlie I) in 1995 for his PhD thesis, and David Beal and Michael Sachinis, who introduced several modifications including a cable-pulley system to produce RoboTuna II.See also
* TunabotReferences
{{Reflist Electromechanical engineering Robotic animals Robots of the United States 1995 robots Massachusetts Institute of Technology Underwater robots Tuna