Scientists invent real-life Pokeball for deep sea creatures

A device designed to gently capture gelatinous deep sea creatures might make it hard for fans of Pokemon to get a grip as it's as close to a real Pokeball as one can get today. 

Lindsay Brownell reported that researchers from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study have engineered a device inspired by origami "to capture soft organisms like squid and jellyfish within their natural habitats, and release them without harm."

The device, rotary actuated dodeahedron (RAD), consists of "five polymer 'petals' attached to a series of rotating joints that are linked together to form a scaffold."

The "petals" are printed and they fold in to make the twelve-sided (hence dodecahedron) enclosure using a single rotary motor.

The team has successfully captured and released a moon jellyfish underwater with RAD in a controlled environment and, after some adjustments, they were able to collect and release other soft organisms like squid in their natural habitat at depths of 500 to 700 meters.

"The RAD sampler design is perfect for the difficult environment of the deep ocean because its controls are very simple, so there are fewer elements that can break. It’s also modular, so if something does break, we can simply replace that part and send the sampler back down into the water," Zhi Ern Teoh, Ph.D., was quoted as saying.

Teoh began work on RAD in 2014. He was building microrobots by hand while he was taking a Design Engineering class and he "wondered if there was a way to fold a flat surface into a three-dimensional shape using a motor instead."

A colleague, Brennan Phillips, Ph.D., suggested he apply the designs he was making to aid in the collection of delicate creatures in the open ocean. 

Studying these delicate creatures has been difficult, as deep sea conditions are rough and the equipment used to grab them, like nets and suction tubes, are designed to endure the harsh environment. These equipment may injure the animals. 

“We approach these animals as if they are works of art: would we cut pieces out of the Mona Lisa to study it? No — we’d use the most innovative tools available. These deep-sea organisms, some being thousands of years old, deserve to be treated with a similar gentleness when we’re interacting with them,” co-author David Gruber, Ph.D., was quoted as saying. 

The study, "Rotary-actuated folding polyhedrons for midwater investigation of delicate marine organisms", is published in Science Robotics. — Aya Tantiangco, GMA News