Japan Develops Robot That Catches Sea Creatures by Itself

Tokyo, April 24 (Jiji Press)--A group including researchers of the University of Tokyo and the Kyushu Institute of Technology said Tuesday that they have developed an autonomous subsea robot capable of finding seafloor life by itself and collecting sample creatures. Manned submersibles that need large mother ships are currently used to collect seafloor life samples as deep-sea video images cannot be obtained in real time due to difficulty sending data by wireless communications. The new robot is small enough to be carried on a small ship. "The time may come when scientists can use such a robot anytime at low costs," said Tamaki Ura, professor at the Kyushu Institute of Technology. The box-shaped robot, called Tuna-Sand 2, is 1.4 meters long and weighs 380 kilograms. It can dive 2,000 meters deep. The robot automatically recognizes possible sea creatures, such as shellfish, based on their colors and marks. It sends minimum images to a mother ship. When a researcher on the mother ship gives an instruction to collect samples, the robot automatically returns to places where it found them and sucks them through its tube device 7 centimeters in diameter. But it is difficult for the robot to catch fast-moving sea life such as fish. In a test conducted in March off the central Japan city of Shizuoka, the robot succeeded in collecting seashells from 100 meters below the sea surface. END