Meet Belle - an autonomous, robot fish designed to collect underwater DNA samples for marine research. It does so without making any sound. It has to be silent, it has to also appear like a fish it has to move like a fish.
The robot can film underwater and collect samples that provide a picture of which organisms live in a given environment.
The robot is designed by mechanical engineering students at ETH Zurich.
Leon Guggenheim, one of the students, said: "So our idea was to create a platform that actually fits into the ecosystem and that gets accepted as part of it. That's why we then developed the fish that behaves like a fish and is also accepted by other marine creatures as a fish.
The 3 foot-long robot uses AI to autonomously navigate its location while taking isolated e-DNA samples and high resolution video.
It propels itself using a silicone fin with two cavities pumping water in cycles.
Its soft tail that rises and falls, while creating no turbulence in the water to blend in with other fish among underwater environments.
Assistant Professor of Robotics Robert Katzschmann, said: "If you look at the way that we currently are going into the oceans, those are large, either unmanned underwater vehicles, but they are definitely very disturbing and they're certainly not made to go into these more delicate environments where we would love to get that e-DNA from. So that's not our goal, right? We want to really go in there and be as silent as a spy and just literally coming in and being a spy on the marine life."
The team hope their robot will help marine biologists study the health and biodiversity of various reef ecosystems that have been impacted by overfishing, pollution and climate change.
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