A Japanese car company has developed a robotic fish that can move in shoals and hopes it might contribute to road safety.
Robots have been humanity’s friends since their inception, despite what you might have seen in anti-robot propaganda movies like Terminator. The list of friendly robots is a long and illustrious one, including such luminaries as Johnny 5, Lieutenant Commander Data, The Autobots, and now joining that list, the Eporo.
The Eporo are three-wheeled robots designed by Nissan in Japan that can move in a shoals like fish. They keep track of the distance between themselves using laser rangefinders and are in constant radio communication with their neighbors.
Nissan hope that the Eporo will help in developing technology that would cut down on car accidents.
“We, in a motorised world, have a lot to learn from the behaviour of a school of fish in terms of each fish’s degree of freedom and safety,” said Toshiyuki Andou, Eporo’s principle engineer.
Source: BBC
