Page 28 - ATD12DEC2015

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SCIENCESaturday 12 December 2015

Estonian turtle-robot searches for shipwrecks and treasure

Taavi Salumae, designer of the U-CAT robot and researcher at the Biorobotics Centre at the Tallinn feet) on a single battery on in July off the Estonian
University of Technology, tests the U-CAT robot in an aquarium using a fish net in Tallinn, Estonia. charge of two hours. It’s coast, and was impressed.
The unique feature of the U-CAT, about the size of a vacuum cleaner, is four silicon flippers inspired equipped with a camera “The fact the robot uses
by streamlined sea turtles’ arms and legs. and lights. flippers for movement is
Most importantly, it can a huge advantage,” he
(AP Photo/Vitnija Saldava) easily be rotated in tight said. “It can move in every
spots that are too danger- direction.”
JARI TANNER may have found a solution quiet motion and won’t ous or difficult for human Latti says the museum is
Associated Press with their latest invention bring up sediment from the divers. considering it for future un-
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — The — a small, propeller-less un- (sea) bottom,” says Taavi Salumae says the U-CAT, dersea investigations, pos-
Baltic seabed, littered with derwater robot that causes Salumae, a designer at the an acronym for Under- sibly to study the remains
war debris and shipwrecks, minimum disturbance and Biorobotics Center of Tallinn water Curious Archaeol- of a 17th-century vessel
has fascinated historians lowers the risk of damage University of Technology. ogy Turtle (winner of a recently found in Estonian
and researchers through to submarine archaeology. The underwater probe has Facebook contest to name waters.
the ages. But the underwa- The unique feature of the been developed since the robot), is one of the Bordered by Finland, Swe-
ter search robots they use U-CAT, about the size of 2012 in the EU-funded Ar- first robots designed to go den, Russia, the Baltic na-
pose problems by further a vacuum cleaner, is four rows project that focuses inside shipwrecks and help tions, Poland, Germany
disturbing the silty waters silicon flippers inspired by on new technologies for underwater archaeologists and Denmark, the Bal-
with their propeller move- streamlined sea turtles’ marine research. It can stay study interiors of locations. tic Sea is rich in historical
ments. arms and legs. submerged for four hours at But its small size has a few wooden wrecks dating
Estonian engineers say they “They move in a slow and a depth of 100 meters (330 drawbacks: It is limited back to the 15th and 16th
to shallow waters, unlike centuries, well-preserved
large robots, some of which because of the sea’s low
can reach depths of six ki- salinity and cool water that
lometers (20,000 feet) with- help keep marine ship-
out damage from water worms away.
pressure. And it is not re- Divers regularly make dis-
motely controlled like tradi- coveries, including an
tional wired probes, which 18th-century shipwreck
means there’s also a risk of filled with drinkable vin-
losing it during missions. tage champagne near the
Last summer, it was success- Finnish Aland Islands, and
fully tested in the Baltic Sea a few months ago Finn-
and the Mediterranean by ish divers located a Ger-
a group of European re- man submarine, the U-679,
searchers. which sank in the Gulf of
Priit Latti, a marine ar- Finland in 1945.
chaeologist from the Es- “A diver can stay sub-
tonian Maritime Museum, merged and film only for
watched the probe dive to a limited time,” said Immi
a flooded Soviet-era pris- Wallin, head of the Finnish
diver group which located
NASA: the U-679. “This kind of ro-
bot can fit into very tight
3 space station astronauts safely return to Earth places and enter into a
ship’s cargo hold through
MOSCOW (AP) — A three- about 120 kilometers ( 75 the crew get out of the crewmates Mikhail Korn- a narrow door.”
person crew from the In- kilometers) northeast of capsule, which rested on its ienko and Sergey Volkov The U-CAT prototype isn’t
ternational Space Station Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. side in the snow. of Russia remain on the commercially available
landed safely Friday in the Kononenko reported to Because of the cold tem- station. They will be joined yet, but Salumae said the
snowy steppes of Kazakh- the Russian Mission Control peratures and strong winds, by three new crew mem- response has been posi-
stan. The U.S. space agen- that the crew was feeling the crew was quickly flown bers next Tuesday: NASA’s tive.
cy’s Kjell Lindgren, Russia’s fine as the capsule was de- to Dzhezkazgan after a Tim Kopra, Russia’s Yuri He claims it’s some “three
Oleg Kononenko and Kim- scending by parachute in brief inspection by doctors. Malenchenko and the Eu- to four times” cheaper
iya Yui of Japan returned thick clouds before land- In better weather, the crew ropean Space Agency’s than the “large and ex-
to Earth in their Soyuz TMA- ing softly in darkness on the undergoes a post-flight Tim Peake. pensive” mostly propeller-
17M capsule after 141 days wind-swept steppes. Rus- medical check-up in a tent Kelly and Kornienko are on poweredrobots, which are
in space. They touched sian rescue teams in four at the landing site. the first joint U.S.-Russian used by the military and
down on schedule at 7:12 helicopters arrived quickly Expedition 46 Commander one-year mission at the the oil and gas industry
p.m. local time (1312 GMT) at the landing site to help Scott Kelly of NASA and space station.q and run into tens of thou-
sands of dollars.q