Robots that swim

Hayward – Darting around the pool as swimmers stand in the shallow end, the dolphin looks much like those that perform acrobatics at theme parks. But this marine creature is a robot.

“When I first saw the dolphin, I thought it could be real,” said a woman who swam with the remote-controlled creature.

Edge Innovations, a US engineering company with an animatronic and special effects division in California, designed the dolphin for an educational pilot programme. It hopes that life-like animatronics used in movies could one day entertain crowds at theme parks, instead of wild animals held in captivity.

“There are like 3 000 dolphins in captivity being used to generate several billions of dollars just for dolphin experiences. So there’s an appetite to love and learn about dolphins,” said Edge Innovations founder and CEO Walt Conti. “We want to offer different ways to fall in love with the dolphin.”

Roger Holzberg, creative director of Edge’s animatronic programme, added: “The idea is really to create a kind of Sesame Street under water. Those characters taught a generation how to feel about different aspects of humankind in ways that had never been imagined before. That’s what we dream of with this.”