"Robot Fish" Developed to Monitor River Water Quality Prove to Be Expensive Toys

SEOUL, KOREA - The biomimetic "robot fish" developed during the previous Lee Myung-bak Administration intended to monitor water quality in the nation's major river systems turned out to be defective or incapable of performing the functions as they were designed.

 

 

The robot fish was developed jointly by four research labs including the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH) as part of a mega-project called the Four Major Rivers Restoration Project during the Lee government (2008-2013). The science think tanks spent three years from June 2010 to June 2013 to develop the robots at the cost of 5.7 billion won (US$5.54 million) received from the research council. 

 

The council announced recently that the project was "successful" based on reports submitted by KITECH last year. The Board of Audit & Inspection found that the council manipulated data and restated that the fish could swim at 2.5 meters per second instead of 1.8 meters per second. But the actual test by the auditors revealed that the fish crawled at only 23 centimeters a second (0.83 km per hour). As for underwater data transmission speed, the research council said it was 4,800 bps. But the test results fell far short of that level and remained at 200 bps.

 

The auditors said they were unable to test swarm control and location recognition abilities as only two out of nine fish were operational. The government auditors also found that a sensor that measures the water's murkiness had not been installed on the fish. The other four sensors that the fish were supposed to have were designed to measure temperature, acidity, electrical conduction, and dissolved oxygen quantity in rivers. But the only sensor operational during the test was one gauging electrical conduction. The other three sensors broke down during the test.