NESCent‘s Robin Smith was a guest speaker at BEACON’s annual Congress in August. While she was here, Robin learned about all the great interdisciplinary BEACON projects involving Xiaobo Tan’s robotic fish.
In landlocked East Lansing, Michigan, you’re unlikely to swim with dolphins. But you can swim with robotic fish, thanks to a team of scientists who are developing underwater robots that swim in schools to monitor water quality.
A surprisingly lifelike robotic fish swims in an aquarium on the Michigan State University campus, its tail fin flexing back and forth.
The demo is part of a three-day meeting at BEACON, a National Science Foundation-funded think tank dedicated to research at the intersection of biology, engineering and computer science.
