News in Science: (Science) Robotic Fish to Monitor Pollution in Spanish Harbor

(Science) Robotic Fish to Monitor Pollution in Spanish Harbor

CBS News reports that a school of battery-powered robotic fish will monitor pollution in the Spanish harbor of Gijon. The robotic fish contain special sensors to help them avoid rocks, ships and other objects so they won't need to be remotely monitored or remote controlled.

The robotic fish will patrol the harbor of Gijon, in northern Spain under a $3.6 million grant from the European Union. Hu said Gijon was chosen because port authorities there had expressed an interest in the technology.

The plan might seem "like something straight out of science fiction," said Rory Doyle, a researcher working on the project, but he explained that there was a very simple reason for choosing fishlike machines to monitor the harbor's environmental health.

"The design of fish which nature has produced is a very energy-efficient one," Doyle said. "The fish's efficiency is created by hundreds of millions of years' of evolution. Submarines come nowhere near it."

Information gathered from the robo-fish would be transmitted to the port's control center using a wireless Internet signal when the devices surfaced. The data gathered would be used to create a three-dimensional pollution map of the harbor's area.