Sawfish Robot

Sawfish is a real-life robotic underwater lumberjack; it swims down to harvest trees that are now underwater due to flooding to create reservoirs.

The Triton Sawfish™ Underwater Harvester is the world's first viable marine technology for logging underwater forests. It is the only deep water logging machine. Piloted and powered remotely, it has eight video cameras as well as sonar to fully inform the remote operator.

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Robots Monitor the Melting Arctic

Earlier this year NOAA warned that increased global warming was combining with natural variability in the Arctic and could result in an ice-free Arctic in as little as 30 years, rather than the end of the century as predict by earlier models. This has created a sense of urgency among organizations studying the changes. NOAA and NASA have combined forces with Northrop Grumman to create a specially modified Global Hawk UAV that will make 6 long duration missions over the Arctic and the Pacific ocean to collect data in troposphere and lower stratosphere.
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Robots From Animals to Automation

Over the past years the Bionic Learning Network, a consortium of universities, institutes and development companies run by German automation giant Festo, has been turning out impressive robotic artifacts. Festo thinks of robots like the AquaPenguin, AquaRay and AquaJelly pictured above as technology demonstrators that help identify bionic principles. These principles in turn may be applicable in their next generation of automation products. In the latest episode of the Robots podcast, Markus Fischer, head of the Bionic Learning Network project and head of Festo's Corporate Design explains how Festo transfers technologies from biomimetic research to actual products.
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