By Jen Nelson

While most lobsters crawl around the ocean floor searching for food, robotic lobsters may soon be searching for underwater mines.

Nicknamed “Robolobster,” the 7-pound, 2-feet-long robot has the ability “to hunt for mines hidden between 10 and 40 feet underwater,” said Joseph Ayers, the inventor of Robolobster and an associate professor of biology at Northeastern.

Recently named one of Time Magazine’s “Coolest Inventions of 2003,” Ayers said Robolobster is an innovation in the world of robots.

Ayers said the U.S. Navy, which is already willing “to spend $27,000 to take out one mine,” could put Robolobster to great use.

The robotic lobsters, developed as a part of the biomimetic autonomous underwater vehicles class, are $1,000 a piece, not per pound. The robots can even be constructed with “claws [made] out of explosives to actually take out the mine,” Ayers said.

Ayers, who began working on Robolobster in 1998, said the invention progressed quickly.

“The first version we had walking after about 18 months,” Ayers said. Four months after that, the robot had “an onboard computer and battery system.”

Robolobster, one of the first robots to be built by a biologist, is unique because it is “one of the first robots ever built to use artificial muscle,” Ayers said.

The artificial muscle, called Nitinol, allows the robot to move more easily on its own.

These biological advances outweigh the military advances of the robotic lobster, Ayers said. Robolobster is one of the first robots to be built entirely based on an existing animal, which Ayers said made it easier to construct the actual robot.

“We had an incredible library about how these animals solve problems,” Ayers said.

Ayers would view the lobster’s reactions and then transfer those reactions back to the robotic lobster.

“Whenever we had a problem, we just went back to the [real] lobster,” Ayers said.

Students have shown interest in the project, but not all agree that it is a necessary development in the scientific field.

“It’s awesome that someone from Northeastern made this technology,” said Julian Smith, a freshman political science major. “It’s great to create new scientific advantages.”

He said, however, that a robotic lobster would “be kind of obsolete.”

“[Scientists] could put their money towards similar things that could perhaps be more useful,” Smith said.

Another student disagreed and said the invention is beneficial, especially “if it helps protect the American military and people.”

“I think it says that Northeastern attracts some of the most creative and inventive minds around,” said Greg Woodbury, a freshman computer science major.

The robotic lobsters currently run under a state of “supervised autonomy,” sent out on their own but programmed to report back upon locating a mine or other object on the ocean floor. The next step, Ayers said, would be to find a way to allow the robot to have full autonomy. This would mean that the robot would have an actual functioning brain, allowing it to respond to different “unpredictable environments,” Ayers said.

New developments for Robolobster are ongoing, Ayers said. Robots like Robolobster, he added, help scientists make vast discoveries in how animals interpret and handle their surroundings.

“[The goal here] is to understand how animals interact with their environment,” Ayers said.