Scientists get some tips from one of nature's best diggers.
The razor clam, rarely heralded for its agility, is an amazing digger. So engineers at MIT stole a few tricks from the slim, candy bar–size mollusk to build an efficient aquatic machine called RoboClam.
In nature:
To burrow, a razor clam begins to squeeze its shells together. Surrounding sand falls into the newly created space. Further squeezing draws water into the mix, making a pocket of quicksand that the clam pulls itself through with ease.
In the lab:
The RoboClam works similarly.In version 2.0, now in progress, an electric actuator expands and contracts three aluminum wedges to turn nearby sand into a slurry. A weight allows the cylindrical unit to sink slightly, and the process repeats.
Results:
“A razor clam can dig one third of a mile through underwater soil on the amount of energy in a double-A battery,” says mechanical engineer Amos Winter. RoboClam 1.0 uses 10 times as much, but since it has more mass, its efficiency is comparable. And unlike existing industrial diggers, Robo-Clam doesn’t use exponentially more energy as it goes deeper.
Application:
Winter envisions RoboClam anchoring undersea robots, blowing up underwater mines, securing transoceanic cable, and exploring alien oceans.
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