MIT's RoboClam Could Being High Tech to the High Seas [VIDEO]

Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a robotic clam that mimics the speedy movements and digging power of the Atlantic razor clam.

Atlantic razor clams (Ensis directus) may not be big, but they pack some serious power inside their shells. The mollusks can dig up to half a kilometer into the sand using only the amount of energy contained in a AA-size battery. The clams can also move quickly, at speeds up to 1 centimeter per second.

The MIT team's "RoboClam" can accomplish the same feat, and its developers say the device could be used to anchor buoys into the seabed or destroy underwater mines.

"The clam's trick is to move its shells in such a way as to liquefy the soil around its body, reducing the drag acting upon it," said MIT mechanical engineering professor Amos Winter. "This means it requires much less force to pull its shell into the soil than it would when moving through static soil."

MIT researchers have been designing robots inspired by the Atlantic razor clam for years. But in a new report in the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, Winter and his co-developer, Anette Hosoi, professor of mechanical engineering and applied mathematics at MIT, published the details of the mechanics behind the RoboClam's digging process, and describe how their robot is able to mimic the real Atlantic razor clam.

The Atlantic razor clam moves through sand by injecting water into it as it burrows, creating a quicksand like stream that lets it move with relative ease.

To get their robot to do something similar the researchers developed a two-part mechanical clam shell that allows the robot to spread apart like an accordion and create the same type of physical contractions the clams uses while it burrows.

The inspiration to build the RoboClam was sparked while Hosoi and Winter thought of energy efficient ways to anchor underwater vehicles.

"You might be operating these vehicles in a current, and need them to be stationary - for example, to monitor a biological situation, or for military purposes," Winter said. "You wouldn't want the vehicle constantly spinning its propellers in order to stay in one place because that just wastes energy, so it would be nice if you could just deploy an anchor and maintain your position without expending any energy."