Under the Sea: Say Hello to “Squishy Fingers”

 Who would have thought the field of robotics will invent something as soft and squishy as this?

For the sake of Mother Earth and all the fragile corals under the vast seas and oceans, Squishy Fingers have been invented. Squishy Fingers is a robot vehicle with soft and flexible fingers designed to gently and carefully take some necessary coral and plant samples underwater. Due to the very delicate structure of corals and the fact that these creatures don't actually regenerate easily, we can say that this indeed is another valuable scientific advancement.

This soft robot is remotely controlled by a joystick and is basically composed of silicone rubber, memory foam, Kevlar fibers and fiberglass. It can reach up to around one kilometer below sea level and can get to some hard to reach spots underwater. As a matter of fact, Squishy Fingers was able to achieve a test dive of this depth, deeper than the 100-meter limit of technical divers.

Squishy Fingers is expected to be out in the market this year. But inventors of the said soft robot is eyeing for an upgrade that can reach up to six kilometers of depth along with some Squishy Arms to guarantee superior safety of the underwater organisms and better capability to collect more reliable specimens.

According to National Geographic Emerging Explorer and Baruch College in New York City Associate Professor of Biology David Gruber, "It's one thing to just see them, but you can't identify a new species just by looking at it or just by taking a new picture. Sometimes you need to take one sample, or even get things like a vein biopsy sample in order to sequence its genome."