The device can find contraband via ultrasound

Sep 29, 2014 06:34 GMT  ·  By

Ships have been a favorite for smugglers ever since trade by sea started out, all those centuries ago. Soon, though, most sea-based opportunities for illicit good shipping might be eliminated, thanks to a new robot.

We're sure that smugglers owning small vessels sometimes tape or otherwise stick bags of, say, drugs to the underside of their boats, so that they may retrieve them at night, after the port inspector has gone.

In the case of larger ships, however, more sophisticated means of slipping illicit goods into a country are used, like fake hulls and propeller shafts.

Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a robot that can submerge and check for the existence of these contraband loading compartments.

The 3D printed ball robot

Seen in the attached picture (even if it is just an artist's render), the robot was created by graduate student Sampriti Bhattacharyya and Ford Professor of Engineering Harry Asada.

It was presented at the IEEE/International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems and proved that it is capable of patrolling the underwater sections of ports.

It not only travels without producing any sort of bubble trails (or at least not visible ones), but can hide in clamps of algae (without getting tangled in time, of course). Ultrasound technology is utilized for the detection of the things we mentioned before.

Propulsion-wise, the engines are located in the permeable half of the device, the bottom half as it were. The watertight half contains the antenna, circuits, battery and everything else that would die an early death if wet.

How the robot was made

Sampriti Bhattacharyya and Harry Asada created the body of the robot through 3D printing technology. Additive manufacturing, as it is otherwise known.

They haven't come up with an affordable mass production, since they're still in prototype stage, but they hope to first implement a few more features, like the ability to perform ultrascans on ships without having to touch the hulls (barnacles and other filth is not fun to get rid of). A longer battery life and wireless charging support are in the works as well.

Once those features are perfected, the two will be able to focus on reducing the production cost (and thus, the price) to something lower than the current $600 / €473. A lot lower, hopefully.

Unfortunately, we can't speculate on how long it will take for everything to be finalized. Maybe three to six months.

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