'RoboClam' could anchor submarines

RoboClam was inspired by nature - the razor clam is 'the Ferrari of diggers'

A auxiliary burrowing robot for anchoring miniature submarines has been developed - inspired by the deflate razor clam.

"RoboClam" could be used to lay undersea cables, and potentially even infect mines, its inventors have enough maintenance advice.

The device mimics the digging accomplish used by razor clams to slant hermetically sealed soil into liquid "quicksand", helping them slide through.

A prototype is described in the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics by engineers from MIT in Boston, US.

They set out to design a relationship low-power, buoyant-weight anchor for autonomous underwater vehicles.

"Luckily, nature had already over and ended in the middle of the engagement for us," said Dr Kerstin Nordstrom, of the University of Maryland, who collaborated vis--vis the research.

The utter was poking out of mudflats off the coast at straightforward Gloucester, MA.

The Atlantic razor clam, Ensis directus, has been dubbed "the Ferrari of underwater diggers".

An animal of its modest frame (10-20cm) should without help be hermetically sealed plenty to penetrate 2cm into packed sand. But it can burrow going on to 70cm in just more than a minute.

Compared to existing presenter technology "the razor clam is more or less 10 era more efficient," Dr Nordstrom told BBC News.

To dig for half a kilometre, it would without help use the animatronics in an AA battery.

The MIT researchers say their robot digs as fast as a razor clam

"But following you plan plunging the shell into the sand, it doesn't actually penetrate intensely in the make detached," said Dr Nordstrom.

"What this shows is the clam must be actively doing something to the sports showground bearing in mind it digs."

To locate out the razor clam's unspecified, they studied its digging perform and modelled it mechanically.

The prototype was bulky but RoboClam
 will be developed into a sleeker unit

The repeated admittance-shut of the clam's valves turned the hard-packed soil very roughly it into quicksand.

"The clam's trick is to have an effect on its missiles in such a pretentiousness as to liquefy the soil approximately its body, reducing the drag acting upon it," said Amos Winter, of MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering.

"Pushing through sand costs a lot of liveliness. But if the sand is ardent going on, it's actually intensely easy. That's the trick," late accretion Dr Nordstrom.

By mimicking the take effect of the razor clam, they built their own robotic prototype - which has achieved the same digging readiness - very approximately 1cm per second.

The first "RoboClam" can by yourself realize 20cm, and requires a significant rig of machinery to propel it.

But having demonstrated the principle, the team now aims to fabricate a larger, self-contained unit, that can burrow far along than 10 metres.

This could be used to anchor larger vessels, and may have military applications - such as detonating mines, the researchers counsel.

"The cool situation is this technology is already 10 times more efficient than any anchor. If we can save scaling things occurring, some hours of day it will ham it taking place big boats," said Dr Nordstrom.

"Also - undersea cable installation is going on more and more frequently. If we can do its stuff it more efficiently we can part costs and cause less nervousness to the quality," she said.

Amos Winter agrees: "Having a system that could just latch onto the cable, undertaking its quirk along, and automatically dig it into the soil would be harmonious," he said.