SoFi, a robotic fish, is here to change the way marine biologists interact with and observe marine life. Robert Katzschmann and a team of soft robotics researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a battery powered fish. Meet SoFi — who is capable of exploring reefs for up to 40 minutes at a time. As you can see in the video below, SoFi’s movement and overall appearance closely resembles any other reef fish — we’re not even certain we would know the difference at first glance underwater.

A diver can be up to 50 feet away from SoFi and still manipulate its movement with a remote control that is small enough to fit in a large BC pocket. Charging the battery takes about an hour and the batteries can be swapped easily between dives.

So far, SoFi has been used to explore reefs near Taveuni, Fiji, where the team did two dives a day using the robofish. When we asked Katzschmann about future plans for utilizing SoFi, he shared that “I’ve received request from many researchers in other locations, for example Hawaii, Florida, Caribbean, Marshall Islands, etc.”

Katzschmann has been scuba diving since 2014 and is currently completing research on soft robotics at MIT. His research has already been published in the Science Robotics journal under the title "Exploration of Underwater Life with an Acoustically-Controlled Soft Robotic Fish."

Since SoFi seems to be so easily controlled, this could open the door for citizen scientists and recreational divers. Katzschmann says that “a commercialized version of SoFi could allow citizen scientists to possibly interact in new ways with marine life, study marine life from remotely and possibly observe and capture behaviors of fish that they would not see if the diver were to swim close to the fish.”

However, the possibility of SoFi swarms — a group of robots that would scout the ocean together — is a more realistic possibility. The swarm would have the ability to recharge continuously by surfacing every time the battery is depleted. Each swarm would be able to record things such as ocean temperatures, pollution levels and sound. Just think, this one robotic fish could revolutionize the way scientists collect data in the ocean.

We are excited to follow this project. In the meantime, you can read more information about SoFi and co-creator Katzschmann here.

• Learn more about Robert Katzschmann and the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory  

The original news story can be found at mit.edu.