Mention unmanned drones these days and you’ll conjure images of tiny plane-like vehicles packing serious heat. Mention unmanned deep sea drones that look like umbrella-shaped aquatic critters and you’ll probably conjure something more like a blank stare. And yet the notion of a lifelike jellyfish robot isn’t new: Researchers at the University of Texas in Dallas, Providence College in Rhode Island, the University of California in Los Angeles, Stanford University and Virginia Tech have been jointly working on the technology for years. Last March, for instance, we wrote about their work on Robojelly, a silicon-based, hand-sized robot that wriggles like a jellyfish by flexing synthetic muscles to pump out water. Why not something sleeker or more powerful, say an octopus or a shark? Because the way a jellyfish moves is so efficient that it’s even been studied for non-oceanic engineering purposes, from crafting more efficient submarines and balloon-like flying devices to developing superior alternatives to propeller-based wind turbines. Imagine a fully-realized version of such a robot running underwater surveillance missions for the U.S. Navy — the marine version of a weaponless drone, in other words, perhaps poking around someone’s oceanfront property (or, heaven forbid, employed in a civilian capacity by ignoble paparazzi to stalk celebrities). Cool, but a little creepy, right? Also: not a pet project. The researchers have a $5 million grant from the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center and the Office of Naval Research to build robots capable of autonomously scooting around the ocean blue. Their purpose could range from undersea spying for the military to more innocuous activities, say keeping tabs on environmental issues like oil spills or creating detailed maps of the ocean floor. Now meet “Cyro,” the 5-foot, 7-inch, 170-pound latest iteration of this robo-jellyfish project. That’s considerably bigger than Robojelly, in part because a larger robo-jellyfish could carry a more substantial payload, including enough power to stay in the ocean for lengthy periods of time, say weeks, months or longer still. Also: Robojelly required a tether to provide power — Cyro requires none. According to Geek.com, Cyro consists of a central … Continue reading WATCH: Robotic Jellyfish ‘Cyro’ Could Work for Navy, Come After You