A few days ago we had the BIOSwimmer robotic tuna fish featured here on Damn Geeky and now it’s the sloppy sea turtle’s turn to have the similar robotic avatar. Designed by a few Swiss chaps at ETH Zurich, Naro-Tartaruga, is turtle-inspired robotic machine having the agility of a sea turtle swimming in the seas able to carry cargo from one destination to the other. Right now it is in the development stage with the cylindrical aluminum vessel acting as the outer shell and couple of flippers fitted. When the turtle-bot will be complete it would traverse the waters at a top speed of 7 knots which is more than what a real turtle can achieve.
The torso of Naro-Tartauga can easily house the equipment such as batteries and sensors (pressure, temperature, gyros, GPS, compass, motor encoders, water leakage and water flow) necessary for self-directed functionality. Also the robotic turtle will have full three dimensional mechanisms with three actuators per fin that can set in motion the fins independently. Powered by a i7 dual core processor and having BlueFox vision the turtle-bot is 1 meters in length weighing around 75 kg. The ultimate aim of the development team is to make underwater robotics vehicles that can help achieve the SeaQuest DSV.
# Naro-Tartaruga robot sea turtle under development stage
Via: GeekyGadgets/Engadget/GizMag