The deep sea is the only mysterious area on the earth that humans have not set foot in, and the strange marine life and rich mineral resources are mouth-watering, but because we have not found materials that can resist the pressure of the deep sea, we can only sigh. At present, submarines made of high-strength titanium alloys can generally only dive to about 500 meters under the sea, if it dares to dive to 10,000 meters, the pressure will roll it into a thin and flat steel plate like rolling flour. If you throw the Eiffel Tower into the Mariana Trench at 10,900 meters, you will be pressed into a photo in minutes. So what is the way to create a robot that can overcome the pressure of the seabed and explore the mysteries of the deep sea for mankind? Scientists have studied it for hundreds of years, found nothing, and are endlessly despised and mercilessly ridiculed by the sea fish that live in the deep sea, is it so difficult that ready-made homework cannot be copied.
01 Flexible robots
In fact, science and technology have always been there, not abandoned, the job of scientists is to discover, the key is to find the code to decipher. After countless experiments, researchers at Zhejiang University finally found the magic code from the deep-sea lionfish, and they used biomimicry to create a soft-bodied deep-sea robot that shocked the world. In 2019, this soft robot incarnated as "Pig Strong" used pressure as air and actually wandered for nearly an hour in the 10,900-meter-deep Mariana Trench, becoming not only the top traffic star in the trench of the day, but also a super idol worshipped in the diving community.
On March 3, 2020, when the world authoritative magazine "Nature" published this research result from Zhejiang University, those old scientists who had studied for a lifetime suddenly beat their chests and sighed, how could I not expect it to be so simple?
The most remarkable thing is that this robot does not use a traditional rigid container to protect the equipment on the robot, but uses flexible silicone as the main material for the robot's torso part. The brain and internal organs of the robot - that is, including the control chip, battery, voltage amplifier, etc. This series of electronic components, actually only under the wrapping of this soft silicone, can operate normally in the deep sea! So how did they overcome the pressure?
02 Design inspiration
How can the blunt lionfish dive to 8178 meters, and its soft body become more invisibly strong? Scientists have found that the original lionfish not only has a good face, but also has excellent bones. The bones of ordinary fish are connected to each other one by one, and the skeleton is very complete, while the bones of lionfish are distributed in small pieces in the gelatinous soft body, which looks as if some parts are missing, the connection between them is relatively loose, and there are many holes in the skull. Could it be that this loose structure improves the stress resistance of deep-sea fish? Therefore, when designing the robot, researchers try to disassemble a complete large circuit board into many scattered small boards, and the electronic components on each small board are also as far apart as possible from each other. This unique design has indeed achieved very good results. Just by wrapping the robot's control circuit with a layer of silicone, it can work normally under the huge pressure of the deep sea.
Only King Kong is not bad, but also allows the soft robot to roam freely on the bottom of the sea and become a swimming fish. Because traditional mechanical structures can easily be damaged by the pressure of the sea, the researchers creatively used "artificial muscles" to create two fins that can swim in the deep sea, a new drive that allows the robot to swim at a speed of 5 centimeters per second on the seabed. Although the current power of the "artificial muscle" is relatively weak, its structure is very simple, the probability of failure is very low, and of course, the C position debuts. What's even more beautiful is that the cost of this robot is nearly 80% lower than that of traditional tin can submersibles.
The mysterious depths of the ocean have always been off-limits for humans, and we have only explored 5% of them so far. With the development of science, more flexible and lower-cost marine robots will continue to appear, and I believe that humans must be able to sing in the depths of the ocean: "Lift your hijab, let me see your face." ”