Agriculture
New, improved robot fish designed for Great Lakes
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Capital News Service
LANSING — New and improved robot fish will soon track live fish and toxic algae blooms in the Great Lakes. This next-generation fish, going on its second year of development, is the third model built by Xiaobo Tan, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan State University, and his research team. “We have a deadline right now to have two of these new ones done before summer, probably May,” said Cody Thon, a research assistant and a mechanical designer of the robot. “There is an algae problem every summer in Lake Erie, so it would be wise to bring them out and see what they can do.”
One prototype is already in testing at the university’s Kellogg Biological Station on Wintergreen Lake, in Augusta between Kalamazoo and Battle Creek, Tan said. “We were able to run the robot: Diving, swimming, going to certain spots, collecting data on harmful algae and temperatures, and send back that data to laptops,” he said.