Can robot fish find pollution?
Can robot fish find pollution? An old fisherman and his wife live on the shores of a polluted sea. Each morning, the gray-bearded angler rides out on the waves and casts his net, pulling in ever-dwindling hauls of fish. Then one day he catches something truly resplendent: a large fish of gleaming gold, speckled with scales of sapphire. What could this mean? It may sound a bit like Alexander Pushkin’s “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish,” but this fictional encounter may soon be a possibilty. Only instead of offering wishes in exchange for its release, this golden fish will hunt down the sources of ocean pollution. Developed by the scientists at the United Kingdom’s University of Essex, five of these $30,000 robotic fish will dive into the waters off the port of Gijon in northern Spain in 2011. Once there, the bots will sniff out and analyze signs of pollution as part of the three-year SHOAL research project funded by the European Commission and coordinated by the engineering firm B
