Soft robotic grabber for subs could enhance marine science

Submersibles are often equipped with robotic arms for exploring the underwater world, but they tend to be rigid and unsuited for interacting with delicate marine life. The new device, built by engineers at Harvard, Baruch College, and the University of Rhode Island (URI), uses a modular system consisting of bending, twisting and soft robotic grabbing units to gently manipulate underwater creatures.

"This new soft robotic arm replaces the hard, rigid arms that come standard on most submersibles, enabling our soft robotic grippers to reach and interact with sea life with much greater ease across a variety of environments and allowing us to explore parts of the ocean that are currently understudied," said first author Brennan Phillips, formerly of Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and now an Assistant Professor at URI.

A custom seawater-based hydraulic engine drives the device, requiring just 50 watts of power. According to the team, this is less than half the power of the smallest commercially available deep-sea electronic manipulator arm. The device can be controlled wirelessly using a glove with embedded soft sensors that translates the wearer’s movements into robotic motion. During deep-sea testing off the coast of Brazil, the system successfully interacted with organisms including a glass sponge, a sea cucumber, a branching coral, and free-floating bioluminescent tunicates.