🪼 Cyborg Jellyfish to Explore the World's Oceans
Scientists from the California Institute of Technology have turned ordinary jellyfish into bio-robots by embedding microchips into them. These cyborgs will help explore the ocean at a fraction of the cost of traditional equipment.
🪼 Why Jellyfish?
Jellyfish inhabit nearly every corner of the world's oceans and can withstand immense pressure at great depths.
Additionally, they lack a central nervous system, making chip implantation painless for them. Remarkably, just one day after the module is removed, the jellyfish fully recover.
The "remote-controlled jellyfish" is quite simple in design: two electrodes are attached to its muscles (jellyfish have radial muscles located beneath their skin layer), which are connected to a waterproof container housing sensors and an SD card for data recording. An electric pulse causes the muscles to contract, allowing the jellyfish to swim in the desired direction while measuring pH levels, salinity, and water temperature.
Currently, the robo-jellyfish can only move vertically. Still, scientists plan to improve the mechanism to enable horizontal movement as well.
