The & pokéball & # 39; submarine can capture some of the rarest creatures of all

There is plenty of ocean to cover for marine biologists, but a new device aims to help catch, study, and gently release some of the rarest creatures.

In many ways, we know more about Mars. our own oceans, occupying many marine biologists to find and study hundreds of thousands of unknown creatures.

But at such extreme depths and distant places, the scientific badysis of a fragile marine creature without damaging it or bringing it to the surface was

Now, a Engineers team from the Wyss Institute of Harvard University helped create a "pokéball" device capable of safely capturing these creatures, badyzing them and then releasing them into its natural habitat . 19659003] Unlike the apparatus of Pokémon however, the apparatus is a polyhedral form composed of five identical "petals" printed in 3D and connected to a series of rotary joints. When a single motor applies a torque to the point where the petals meet, it rotates the entire structure around its joints and folds into a hollow dodecahedron, hence the name of Rotary-Actuated Dodecahedron Sampler (RAD) [19659003] Publishing his discoveries in Science Robotics the team led by Zhi Ern Teoh tested the sampler in a nearby aquarium, successfully collecting and releasing underwater jellyfish

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'An abduction of aliens underwater & # 39;

After some modifications to allow it to withstand ocean conditions, the RAD was mounted on a remote controlled submarine vehicle (ROV) and subjected to depths of up to 2300ft.

The device has been successful in capturing and releasing delicate organisms such as squid and jellyfish.

"The design of the RAD sampler is perfect for the harsh environment of the deep ocean because its controls are very simple, so Teoh said," It's also modular, so if something breaks, we can just replace that part and return the sampler to the water. "

The design is not completed for at the moment, because the team still wants to make it even more robust for underwater tasks harder like marine geology, but also attach scientific instruments to make it a real mobile laboratory.

L & rsquo; Author collaborator of the study avid Gruber added: "We would like to add cameras and sensors to the sampler so that, in the future, we can capture an animal, collect a lot of data about it like its size, its material properties and even its genome and then let it go, pre as an extraterrestrial abduction underwater. "