The
razor clam, rarely heralded for its agility, is an amazing digger. So
engineers at MIT stole a few tricks from the slim, candy bar–size
mollusk to build an efficient aquatic machine called RoboClam.
In nature
To burrow, a razor clam begins to squeeze its shells
together. Surrounding sand falls into the newly created space.
Further squeezing draws water into the mix, making a pocket of quicksand
that the clam pulls itself through with ease.
In the lab
The RoboClam works similarly.In version 2.0, now in progress, an
electric actuator expands and contracts three aluminum wedges to turn
nearby sand into a slurry. A weight allows the cylindrical unit to
sink slightly, and the process repeats.
Results
“A razor clam can dig one third of a mile through underwater soil on
the amount of energy in a double-A battery,” says mechanical engineer
Amos Winter. RoboClam 1.0 uses 10 times as much, but since it has more
mass, its efficiency is comparable. And unlike existing industrial
diggers, Robo-Clam doesn’t use exponentially more energy as it goes
deeper.
Application
Winter envisions RoboClam anchoring undersea robots, blowing up
underwater mines, securing transoceanic cable, and exploring alien
oceans.
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