A company named Edge Innovations has successfully designed and built a bottlenose dolphin robot that is very much looks like the real thing. The company hopes that the robot will be used in Hollywood films and water theme parks as a replacement for the real dolphin.
The dolphin robot is claimed to be able to dive like a real dolphin with the support of animatronic technology.
From the Independent resource, Monday (19/10), Edge Innovations said that the robot is priced at $3-5 million per unit. Seeing its capabilities, the robot is claimed to be able to replace the thousands of current dolphins in captivity for business purposes.
The animatronic dolphin weighs about 250 kilograms and 2.5 meters long. To make it look like real, the company used silicone for the dolphin robot skin.
Companies from the United States are not the first to make robots resembling living things. The company is known to have built the robots used in the films Free Willy, Deep Blue Seda, and Anaconda.
PETA activist, Katherine Sullivan, welcomed the presence of the dolphin robot. She thought the robot can end the exploitation of the dolphins.
“The cruel ‘swim with dolphins’ program is coming to an end, with young dolphins traumatically abducted from their habitats in the sea and their panicked mothers, sometimes illegally,” said Sullivan.
Launching Metro, Edge Innovations is currently promoting a robot dolphin called a robo-dolphin to various amusement parks in China. They estimate that they can sell up to 150 units over the next three years.
From a business standpoint, selling the robo-dolphin has been very profitable for Edge Innovations. However, buyers are much more economical because they do not incur a lot of maintenance and medical expenses.
In addition to using a silicone skin, Edge Innovations has dyed the dolphin’s teeth to match them exactly. Not only that, the robot can move and jump like a real dolphin.
