The device is biodegradable because it is made of fish food and can feed aquatic wildlife at the end of its lifetime
Scientists at the Lausanne Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) have developed a water robot that can be ingested by fish at the end of its useful life.
The robot, with the shape of a small boat, can move in the water using Carbon dioxide reactions, citric acid, sodium bicarbonate and propylene glycol – all non -toxic and biodegradable materials – which already allowed the device to nadate for several minutes.
“Although the development of miniature swimming robots for natural environments has advanced quickly, they usually depend on plastics, batteries and other electronic components. With this work, we show how they can be replaced by completely biodegradable and edible components,” said the doctoral student at the doctorate student Shuhang Zhang, one of those responsible for creating the robot.
The robot is designed to be not only harmless for aquatic fauna, but even beneficial. To add resistance and stiffness to the outer structure, which is about 5 cm in length, the researchers used fish for fish with another 30% protein and less 8% fat than The food sold in anima stores
EPFL sees the possibility of producing this type of robots in large quantities to collect environmental data such as water pH, temperature, contaminants and the presence of microorganisms.
They can also be used to provide fish or medicines to fish, and the possibility of raising artificial pets is really being considered, although EPFL note that experiences are still at an early stage.
