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U-Cat - the new underwater robot

Listen to this article An amazing underwater robot, U-CAT, was unveiled at the Science Museum in London during the ‘Robot Safari’ exhibition taking place from 28 November to 1 December 2013. Created to explore wrecks and explore underwater caves, the android will enable more accurate penetration. The device was designed at the Tallinn University of

ByTomasz Andrukajtis

Published: December 1, 2013 - 20:13

Updated: July 22, 2023 - 03:39

Listen to this article

An amazing underwater robot, U-CAT, was unveiled at the Science Museum in London during the ‘Robot Safari’ exhibition taking place from 28 November to 1 December 2013. Created to explore wrecks and explore underwater caves, the android will enable more accurate penetration.

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The device was designed at the Tallinn University of Technology’s Biorobotics Centre. The robot is modelled on the structure of a sea turtle, mainly because of the way it moves. It is equipped with four independently driven flippers, which makes the device very agile. It can move forwards, backwards, up and down and rotate on its own axis, yet it does not muddy the water, which is very important when exploring wrecks where visibility can be lost.

U-CAT is extremely innovative if only because most conventional underwater robots use special rotors to move, making it easy for visibility to deteriorate making it difficult to survey and reconstruct the object.

The idea of creating the robot was part of the Arrows research project, which was fully funded by the European Union. The idea was to develop a technology to facilitate archaeological work underwater. The technology developed as part of the programme will be tested in the Mediterranean and Baltic Sea in cooperation with larger underwater robots, whose aim will be to identify underwater locations.

Source: cdiver.net
Photo: Tallinn University of Technology

About author

Tomasz Andrukajtis

Editor-in-chief of the DIVERS24 portal and magazine. Responsible for obtaining, translating and developing content. He also supervises all publications. Achived his first diving certification – P1 CMAS, in 2000. Has a degree in journalism and social communication. In the diving industry since 2008.