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This Robot Mimics a Primitive Eel-Like Fish, Swims Like a Pro

Meet AgnathaX: a long, undulating robot designed to mimic the movements of a lamprey. Putting it to the test underwater helped scientists gain a better understanding of the process that goes behind the generation of movement after a spinal cord injury. Their discovery could be applied in the development of swimming robots used in search and rescue operations.
AgnathaX swimming under the water 6 photos
Photo: Kamilo Melo, BIOROB-EPFL
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It's not the first robot the researchers at the Biorobotics Laboratory in Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) are developing. They have been designing quadruped robots, humanoid ones, and modular machines. This is just their latest example used to study how locomotion works in eel-like robots.

AgnathaX is equipped with a set of motors that control the robot's ten segments, which are designed to mimic the muscles found on a lamprey's body. The robot also features force sensors placed along the segments that detect the force of the water against it, similar to the pressure-sensitive cells on a lamprey's skin.

For the tests, the team used their robot to run mathematical models to simulate the diverse components of the nervous system and better grasp its complex dynamics.

"We had AgnathaX swim in a pool equipped with a motion tracking system so that we could measure the robot's movements," says Laura Paez, a PhD student at Biorobotics Laboratory.

The results showed that both the central and peripheral nervous systems have a role in generating locomotion. The benefit of having the two systems function together is that it allows the robot to continue swimming even if communication between body segments fails.

"In other words, by drawing on a combination of central and peripheral components, the robot could resist a larger number of neural disruptions and keep swimming at high speeds, as opposed to robots with only one kind of component," explains Kamilo Melo, a co-author of the study.

These discoveries could be utilized to improve the design of swimming robots for search and rescue missions and environmental monitoring. For example, the scientists' controls and force sensors can aid such robots in navigating through flow perturbations. Not only that, but they can also help them better withstand damage to their technical components.

EPFL researchers' extensive work was published in Science Robotics. If you want to see the creepy eel-like robot in action, the team has also published a video that shows AgnathaX swimming like a pro.

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About the author: Florina Spînu
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Florina taught herself how to drive in a Daewoo Tico (a rebadged Suzuki Alto kei car) but her first "real car" was a VW Golf. When she’s not writing about cars, drones or aircraft, Florina likes to read anything related to space exploration and take pictures in the middle of nature.
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