A trio of researchers at the University of Notre Dame have designed and built a robotic turtle to help hatchlings make their way to the sea after being born.
“Our hope is to use these baby sea turtle robots to safely guide sea turtle hatchlings to the ocean and minimise the risks they face during this critical period,” said Yasemin Ozkan-Aydin, assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Notre Dame.
The robot is designed to emulate the gait of a sea turtle moving on land. Its front flippers are used to propel the body and the rear ones to steer.
The four flippers can be controlled independently and are made of silicone to provide the right mix of flexibility and stiffness.
“To maximise adaptability and versatility, we studied the locomotion patterns of different species and incorporated the most effective aspects from each,” says Prof Ozkan-Aydin.
The robot turtle is battery-powered and uses 3D-printed plastic for the oval of its “body” and the parts that connect this body to the flippers.
According to Nature, baby sea turtles typically use three methods to help them navigate after being hatched. These are visual cues, following the higher light level of the reflective sea, sensing Earth’s magnetic field and, once closer to the sea, sensing the kinetic forces of the waves.
These can be disturbed by human influence, though, such as city lights causing sea turtles to head in the wrong direction. The suggestion is the robot sea turtle could be used as a guide for the hatchlings.
Some of you may recall the gauntlet sea turtles go through from David Attenborough’s documentary series Blue Planet, which showed the hatching of green turtles on Ascension Island.
The turtles have to make their way from where they are hatched, under the sand on the beach, to the sea. All seven key species of sea turtle are listed as threatened or endangered, while only one in 1,000 sea turtle hatchlings make it to adulthood, according to the WWF.
The team behind the robot sea turtle includes Prof Ozkan-Aydin, University College Dublin undergraduate John Simon McElroy, and electrical engineering doctoral student Nnamdi Chikere.
