The rotary actuated dodecahedron (RAD) sampler has five origami-inspired "petals" arranged around a central point that fold up to safely capture marine organisms, like this jellyfish. Source: Wyss Institute at Harvard University
Researchers from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the City University of New York’s Baruch College have created a device that allows marine scientists to study delicate deep-water animals for the first time.
The new origami-inspired device traps delicate sea animals in a folding polyhedral enclosure for study and then lets them go without any damage or harm inflicted on the animal.
"We approach these animals as if they are works of art: would we cut pieces out of the Mona Lisa to study it? No - we'd use the most innovative tools available. These deep-sea organisms, some being thousands of years old, deserve to be treated with a similar gentleness when we're interacting with them," said David Gruber, Presidential Professor of Biology and Environmental Science at Baruch College.
The device is called RAD, which stands for a rotary actuated dodecahedron. It is designed for the scientists to interact with these animals in the deep water. RAD uses rotary-actuated folding polyhedrons that allow it to quickly and safely capture marine organisms for exploring marine life and the areas of the ocean that remain unexplored. During testing, the device could capture fragile jellyfish without hurting or killing them.
RAD is made of five identical 3D-printed polymer petals attached to rotating joints that link together to create a scaffold. It rotates at the joints and folds up into a hollow dodecahedron. There is a single motor that applies torque where the petals meet.
Zhi Ern Teoh, a former Wyss postdoctoral fellow said, "I was building microrobots by hand in graduate school, which was very painstaking and tedious work, and I wondered if there was a way to fold a flat surface into a three-dimensional shape using a motor instead.”
The RAD design is perfect for operations in deep ocean environments.
“The controls are very simple, so there are fewer elements that can break. It's also modular, so if something does break, we can simply replace that part and send the sampler back down into the water," said Teoh. "This folding design is also well-suited to be used in space, which is similar to the deep ocean in that it's a low-gravity, inhospitable environment that makes operating any device challenging."
Currently, University of Rhode Island researchers are creating a rugged version of the RAD sampler for the heavy-duty underwater tasks.
"We'd like to add cameras and sensors to the sampler so that, in the future, we can capture an animal, collect lots of data about it like its size, material properties, and even its genome, and then let it go, almost like an underwater medical check-up," said Gruber.
The paper on the new device was published in Science Robots.
