“Why are you showing me a picture of a clothespin?” you’re probably asking, or “What can that possibly do?”
Well, that tiny little apparatus is the RoboClam, a miniature bot developed by MIT engineers, and it could potentially do a lot of things: including laying undersea cables, anchoring submarines, or even destroying underwater mines.
Using the natural digging action of the Atlantic razor clam, the apparent “Ferrari of underwater diggers,” the RoboClam essentially turns solid matter into liquid, allowing it burrow easily into underwater soil. A razor clam can burrow 70cm into the ground in under a minute, a feat the RoboClam’s developers claim it can match.
Along with collaborator Dr. Kerstin Nordstrom at the University of Maryland, the researchers studied the natural mechanisms of razor clams and modeled their bot accordingly. According to Nordstrom, the razor clam is about “10 times more effective” than any existing anchor technology we humans have developed, making it a perfect model to study.
At the moment, the team’s RoboClam can only burrow 20cm, and that accompanied by a significant rig of machinery. But now that they have effectively demonstrated the principle of their invention, they plan to develop a larger unit that will be able to dig much deeper distances.
You can find more information about their prototype in the journal of Bioinspiration and Biometrics.
Source BBC News.
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