Swimming

When baby sea turtles hatch from their buried eggs, they use their powerful flippers to make their way up through the sand. A new "sand-swimming" robot, inspired by those hatchlings, could one day save lives or even explore other planets.

While most of us may just think of krill as whale food, the tiny crustaceans are also very adept swimmers … enough so that scientists have developed a krill-inspired robotic platform in hopes of creating swarms of ocean-exploring swimming robots.

Underwater scooters are nothing new, although most of them are devices which users must hold in front of themselves. The Seakool D2 is different in that it's worn around the waist, keeping the user's hands free and their view unobstructed.

When designing fish-like underwater robots, you want a means of propulsion which is both energy-efficient and reasonably speedy. A new tail-flapping system may fit the bill, paving the way for wider usage of such bots.

Robots that move across both land and water are potentially very useful, but they also tend to be complex and rather slow. A new bio-inspired amphibious bot, however, utilizes a relatively simple mechanism to undulate at a good clip.

Bioinspired underwater robots that swim by undulating their bodies may be more energy-efficient than their rigid counterparts, but they're also quite difficult to build. That could soon change however, thanks to a new modular robotics system.

While most people wear a PFD (personal floatation device) when boating, such is typically not the case when they're swimming in open water. A new prototype wristband is designed for such scenarios, as it features floatation airbags that can be manually deployed if needed.

Scientists regularly draw ideas from the natural world in a bid to improve robotic performance, and the latest creation in this space is a soft robot that mimics butterfly stroke in humans to move through the water with unparalleled speed.

While lifeguards serve a vital purpose, it can sometimes be difficult for them to keep an eye on all the swimmers, all the time. An experimental new device has been designed to help, by sending an alert if its wearer is drowning.

While there already are automated lifeguarding systems for home swimming pools, Mylo is claimed to be different. Among other things, it utilizes dual cameras and artificial intelligence to spot swimmers who may be in trouble.

Subsurface oceans on moons are some of the most promising places to look for life beyond Earth. NASA is now funding a project to develop a swarm of small swimming robots that would explore these alien oceans for signs of extraterrestrial life.

Ghost Robotics' Vision 60 quadruped robot is already quite a versatile beast, capable of walking, running and even carrying a gun. Now, thanks to a third-party attachment, it can also "swim" through the water.