Researchers at Virginia Tech, the Univ. of Texas at Dallas and other schools are developing a robotic jellyfish that will run on sea water. This Robojelly will move like a real jellyfish and will be fueled by a combination of oxygen and hydrogen gases. One of the head researchers said ""To our knowledge, this is the first successful powering of an underwater robot using external hydrogen as a fuel source." U.S. Navy's Office of Naval Research is funding the development of Robojelly hoping one day it could be used for rescue operations. The researchers are hoping the project to one day be used for a wide range of military and civilian purposes.
I found this article very cool. I just imagine all these scientists sitting around deciding what to do with a new grant, when someone yells out "lets make a robotic jellyfish!" Oh smart people. . .Anyway, the fact that it runs on seawater is very cool. I wonder if being fueled by seawater is something that could be considered for other types of technology. If not, it's still a very interesting idea that will probably be very useful in the future.
Stableford, Dylan. "Robot Jellyfish: U.S. Navy-backed Researchers Developing Robojelly." Yahoo! News. Yahoo!, 22 Mar. 2012. Web. 25 Mar. 2012. <http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/robot-jellyfish-u-navy-backed-researchers-developing-robojelly-152601359.html>.
