Can a robotic fish patrol harbors for pollution while swimming so quietly it never disturbs the marine life it protects? Huosheng Hu describes building fish robots that evolved from aquarium exhibits to autonomous ocean sentinels, alongside brain-controlled wheelchairs for people who cannot move.

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Hu traces his journey from industrial automation to biomimetic underwater robots, sparked when an aquarium needed robotic replicas of fish species that could not legally be displayed. His 60-centimeter robotic fish uses four to five discrete motor segments to replicate the S-wave swimming motion captured from real fish via camera analysis. The design includes a buoyancy system mimicking a fish bladder, a center-of-gravity shifting mechanism for depth changes, and sensors r ...