Why make robots chasing drunk fish

The zebrafish robot and its management application

Maurizio Porfiri has a very interesting job . He feeds the fish alcohol or caffeine, and then drives them with the help of a predator robot, which he made himself.

The fact is that the experimental fish are zebrafish , also known as zebrafish. These fish are used as model organisms to study various processes in nature, including the action of drugs. In particular, these were the first domestic animals that received the bioluminescence gene in 2003.

In order to weed out unnecessary information and accurately understand exactly how drugs or other substances act on animals, it is necessary to bring them to a clearly controlled stress state. But this is not so easy to do if you have live predators.
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Therefore, in the laboratory of the Polytechnic School of New York University, Porfiri, together with its students, creates robot fish. In the future, predator fish will be able to deliver exactly as many anxieties to experimental fish as is required in the laboratory. And robots in the form of the zebrafish themselves will be able to help in studying their behavior and how to manage them.


Engineers dismantled roboryba

The researchers hope that, eventually, they will be able to create a roboryba, which will be able to work in seawater. In the future, such a robot will, for example, be able to lead sea creatures behind it if in the region of their permanent residence a tanker allows oil to leak.

It may not look as cool as a robot salamander , and not as scary as a robot shark , but engineers are trying to change the world for the better with the help of their work - and this is a worthy goal.