London Aquarium Autonomous Fish Robot Exibit

The London Aquarium has a new exhibit seems to be baffling to both adults and children alike. The new exhibit contains fully autonomous, thinks and makes decisions for itself; not controlled by remote, robotic carp. The “robofish” are about 50cm long, 15cm high and 12cm wide (20in by 6in by 5in), and covered with bright scales that reflect light. The fish are outfitted with several sensors that allow to understand their surroundings as well as more life-like swimming and sharp turning.

Biologically inspired by the common carp, the new designs can avoid objects and swim around a specially designed tank entirely of their own accord.

This new kind of cyber-fish took three years to develop, by a team of scientists from Essex University.

Future generations may be used for seabed explorations, detection of leaks in oil pipelines, or even as spies.

Although robotic fish have been investigated for the last 10 years or so, the creators of the new models claim theirs are the smartest yet.

After spending a few hours at the Bass Pro Shops in Vaughn Ontario last year the fish do look like very convincing swimmers. You can watch a few videos of the fish in action from the aquariums press day, complete with screaming British children obnoxiously slapping the glass. Theres even a robotic fish in the tank sans the fish-like exterior.

Check out the slaptastic video. (more)

Link via Slashdot

Photos of a US Soldier Fishing in Iraq

Reguardless of your opinions, or mine for that matter, on war, we are not presenting this in any way shape or form that should draw judgement over the actions of governments or soldiers. That said, I would like to point out a few pictures on undermars.com of a US soldier carp fishing in Iraq. Below, I have linked directly to each image, should you choose to visit the site please read the warning first.

Please keep comments friendly and on topic, any pro-war or anti-war flamebait will be removed immediately.

What is this site [undermars.com]?
This site contains an archive of photos taken by soldiers and military contractors serving in active duty. This site aims only to visually document their experiences and is not a political site. The name “Under Mars” is an homage both to Mars, the Greek God of War, and to the otherworldly nature of the experience.

What is the goal of this site?
The goal of this site is exclusively to share photos of the experience of war, without politicizing, censoring, or editing.

I can not emphasize enough that this site contains graphic and disturbing images of war and what it does to people. Some of the photos are beautiful and some expose the true horror of what we humans do at times. Please do not enter if you are not comfortable seeing such images. The pictures are not sorted or censored and many may be quite upsetting, as is war.

Picture 1, Picture 2, Picture 3 via UnderMars