It’s robotic fish day at the MHT Blog. Not content to be messing around with building just one fish robot, MIT reports two of its researchers, Kamal Youcef-Toumi and Pablo Valdivia Y Alvarado, have developed a whole school of fish robots. MIT News offers a few differences between these new RoboFish and the MIT-developed RoboTuna, the precursor of Boston Engineering’s Ghost Swimmer:

Robotic fish are not new: In 1994, MIT ocean engineers demonstrated Robotuna, a four-foot-long robotic fish. But while Robotuna had 2,843 parts controlled by six motors, the new robotic fish, each less than a foot long, are powered by a single motor and are made of fewer than 10 individual components, including a flexible, compliant body that houses all components and protects them from the environment. The motor, placed in the fish’s midsection, initiates a wave that travels along the fish’s flexible body, propelling it forward.