Good idea?
It's nice not to scare the fish and all... but aren't they asking for their £20,000 gear to be chomped by a shark (or other underwater predator)?
Scientists in the UK plan to release a school of autonomous robotic fish into the sea off northern Spain to help detect for hazardous pollutants in the water. The robots are designed to look like carp and swim like real fish so they won't scare the local meat-based wildlife while patrolling the port of Gijon. Each robo-carp …
welcome our robotic carp overloards.
Seriously however, how long before a shark mistakes it for food?
Will they respond to fishermen? Will there be contests to see who catches the biggest robo-fish?
Will we one day have robo-whales?
Hmm robo whales, add viewports and compartments and you have a new travel industry.
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Just for the swimming hardware? Plus the cost of the "docking stations" (to coin a phrase) and attendant bits & pieces & software? And more in support costs? Plus the cost of the human element? And a holiday in Spain, to boot?
Hell, I'll do it for half of whatever the total works out to be, using off the shelf parts!
Honestly, you'd think they'd have better things to do, spending scads of money on this sort of project, probably just to become a dab hand at some new embedded processor the prof fancied the look of. Of course, if they can tuna the software and hardware by spending a few squid I suppose it might work.
It's not my plaice to pout I suppose as most students just flounder around listening to bass tracks or sole music and it's nice to see students with a worthy porpoise but you have to wonder what sort of pollacks they will publish in their paper.
Anonymous, would you put your name to that array of awful piscine puns (I resisted working in hard of herring, damn, no I didn't!)?
Paris, nice kipper.
Oh, how do you stun an octopus?
Kick it in the tentacles!
"Om nom nom nom BLEARGH! Jesus, Bob, forget these things. They're carp!"
Sharks (of which there are many hanging about Biscay looking for the electrical signature of something slow to munch on) can't spell and that's £20,000 down the drain. Never mind ROTM, more like a line of angry sharks suing for Li-Ion burns and false advertising.