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Swimming Robotic Eel Sniffs Out Water Pollution Source

Researchers from EPFL, together with other institutes, have developed a robotic eel that swims through contaminated water to find the source of the pollution. The sensor-equipped robot can be controlled remotely or move on its own. In tests carried out in a small section of Lake Geneva, the robot was able to generate maps of water conductivity and temperature. The robot is made up of numerous modules that each contain a small electric motor for changing curvature, enabling it to move smoothly through the water. The modular design also allows engineers to change its composition and vary its length as needed. Some of the modules contain conductivity and temperature sensors, while others have tiny, sophisticated chambers that fill up with water as the robot swims. These chambers contain miniaturized biological sensors that house either bacteria, small crustaceans, or fish cells. The sensors work by observing how these organisms react when put into contact with the water - thereby giving an indication of whether certain key pollutants are present and of the water toxicity in general.

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Automation Data Acquisition Data Acquisition Electronics & Computers Energy Measuring Instruments Monitoring Motion Control Robotics Sensors Test & Measurement

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    Transcript

    00:00:04 envir robot is a project where we try to develop an intelligent robot that actually looks like a snake a water snake with different segments and the goal of the project is to measure pollution directly in the lake so instead of having a measurement station somewhere or instead of going out and taking a sample and bringing it back to the lab the robot can either go on a

    00:00:25 mission where we say okay go around the lake in this side and that side or what we also like to achieve is that the robot by itself can find the source of a pollution and in that way it would have to be able to measure locally and then decide where to go next the robot has many many different modules plus the head so each modules are identical and they have a motor so that the joint can

    00:00:48 oscillate then there is the head which coordinates all the movements of these different modules so you can have a pattern which propels the the whole robot forward these modules in princip can be made with different sensors so some modules have the sensors on the outside like we have a module here that measures very general water quality parameters temperature conductivity for

    00:01:10 example and then other modules we try to integrate biological sensors because they can potentially measure something that is the toxicity of the water so and in order to capture the toxicity we use living organisms because living organisms will be exposed to the water and they can tell us if there's something in the water that they are affected by and that causes toxic it the

    00:01:31 idea with the robot is not that we can measure 15,000 different chemical compounds but that we can take a global measure of the water quality